The Plan
by Googie
Summary: Castle has a plan for Kate's birthday, but then it eventually morphs into a sub-plan to pull a fast one on Lanie and the guys. Caskett moments in this one.  Total AU. *Complete*
1. Chapter 1

**_This little thing popped into my mind this morning, so I just started writing it down. Some parts may not be totally believable (in real-world type of reality), but since this is fiction, and the series and characters are fiction anyway, I thought I'd take a few liberties. And even though it may not be 100% believable, I hope it will be fluffy and fun. Not sure how long it will be yet, but I have some ideas. Should definitely be several chapters, if it's well-received._**

**_I'm not sure when it's set, but for simplicity sake, Josh is no longer in the picture. And neither is Gina. They're still dancing around each other, but they're getting closer even though nobody will admit anything yet. They have the easy comraderie that we've seen so far in season 3._**

**_(Disclaimer: No, I don't own the characters.)_**

**_Please read and review...I love to know what you think!_**

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**_ADDITIONAL NOTE, edited 5/16/2011: It's Castle Season 3 finale day! As I write this update note, I think back on the last 6 1/2 months since I started this fic. At that point, I wasn't even sure I could write 10 chapters of it, and as of today, there are 65 with more to come. New people still tackle this fic all the time, I believe, and I love it, and I thank you if you're one who is willing to take the plunge. I just want to say if you are one of those who are just reading this for the first time, please leave me some reviews for some of the chapters along the way...don't just wait until the end! There are a lot of twists and turns, and despite the fact that I may have written the chapter months ago, I still LOVE to read your comments and thoughts about those earlier chapters. A few people have done that, and it was so fun for me, as an author, to sort of re-experience the story again with them as they travel through all of the chapters._**

**_Enjoy!_**

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Rick Castle smiled sneakily at the bit of information he had just found out. Oh, there was nobody around to see him as he sat alone in his office, but that didn't stop him from the grin or even the evil laugh. He didn't know how he could have gone without knowing this piece of information for as long as he did, but what was important was that he knew it now. And now that he had the information, he also knew he just had to do something with it. Something big. Something awesome. Something so awesome that it would outshine every other awesome thing in the history of awesome things.

Next week was Detective Kate Beckett's birthday, and he was going to do something about it.

But he needed help. He knew that. He jumped up and started to pace the room. With the idea that was quickly forming in his head, he knew he'd never be able to pull it off without some help. Kate was too smart...she would know something was going on. And, frowning, he admitted that she was also too suspicious of him to just blindly go along with him, even if he begged. So that left letting other people in on his plan. He hoped he could trust them.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

His first stop was to Captain Montgomery. To make this work, he knew he needed the Captain on board with his idea. But he knew he couldn't let Kate see him talking to the Captain, so he called him and arranged to meet him at his house.

Now, sitting across from him in his homey living room, Rick proposed his plan to him, and then sat back. Montgomery drummed his fingertips together and didn't say anything.

Getting worried, Rick continued on, "The biggest part of this hinges on you. You're her Captain...you have to approve it if it has a chance of working. If you OK it, I know I can do the rest. If she lets herself, you know she'd enjoy this. And you know how hard she works, how many hours she puts in. She needs this too. And what better time than for her birthday?" He paused and looked at the Captain, who was still sitting there, looking back at him, expressionless. "Come on, Captain, I'm not a perp. You're weirding me out. Just let me know what you think. Will you help me?"

Montgomery smiled. "Castle, I don't know if you know what you're really getting into, but you're an adult. If you're willing to put yourself in the direct path of Kate Beckett when she's mad, then I say you should go try. Because I have to admit you're right...she's been working too much lately. So if you want to put yourself in the line of fire, then I'll approve it."

Castle slumped back into the chair and blew out the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "Thanks, Cap. You had me worried there for a minute."

"Castle, I'll go along with this, but I do have a couple of conditions. When all is said and done, she does need to be able to walk away if you're not as good at convincing her as you seem to think you are. Anything else would be, you know, kidnapping? Federal offense? And man, no matter what the reason, I can't be involved in anything like that. Nor do I want to be on the bad side of Kate Beckett once this is all over."

Rick nodded. "Yeah, I know. But I think I have a way around that." He explained his idea, which the Captain grudgingly admitted might just work. And more importantly, he agreed to it. "Hey, you said a couple of conditions...what's the second?"

"Whatever happens with this little escapade, you keep it out of the precinct. And out of your books. As tough as she is, she doesn't need everyone knowing about this. If that happens or if she's mad at you, she's not effective, and that's bad for me and for my unit. Capisce?"

"Capisce." Castle replied solemnly.

After talking a bit more, the men stood up and shook hands. "Remember," Rick cautioned, "I was never here, and we never had this conversation. You were watching bad network TV tonight, and I was working on my book." Nodding in agreement, Montgomery walked Rick out, and Rick got in his car and drove away, on to getting agreement with phase 2 of his plan: Lanie.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"You want to do WHAT?" Lanie squealed.

Rick glanced nervously around the dimly lit bar where he had arranged to meet Lanie. "Keep it down, will you? We don't need to draw that much attention. With volume like that, if the ME thing doesn't work out, you could go into public address announcing without the public address system. But you heard me right. Montgomery already agreed to his part. Now I need a few things from you." He went on to outline how the whole thing would go down, the part he needed her to play, and the extra favor he needed to make it a little more comfortable so Kate would ultimately agree to the plan. As he related everything, using his storytelling abilities to paint a picture in her mind, he could see the transformation in her facial expressions as she went from incredulous, to a bit skeptical, to a willing accomplice.

"So will you do it? Will you help me? She might not thank you at first, but you know it will be good for her. And there's a weekend at a spa in it for you...", he added as a little incentive/reward.

"Wellll..." she said as she looked at him slyly, "I think I could be persuaded to help you out. But I need to know something. What's in this for you...what are you planning once this whole thing is underway? What's your hidden agenda?"

Castle smiled, knowing what she was getting at. "Dear Doctor, much as I know exactly what you're asking, I don't know how to give you the answer I think you're looking for. What I have planned is exactly what I told you. Anything else that happens will be entirely up to Kate. And what's in it for me? I get the satisfaction of using all of this money I have to do something nice for an extraordinary person, one who is always giving to others, and who could stand to take a little time for herself."

"Nice? Son, this isn't nice. Flowers and a box of chocolates are nice. This is, like, hoo-wee smokin' hot, have-I-died-and-gone-to-heaven awesome!"

"So you think she'll like it? That she'll go along with it?" he asked excitedly, and Lanie got a glimpse of the 9 year old on a sugar rush persona that Kate used to use to describe him.

Lanie shook her head. "Now don't you go putting words in my mouth...that girl is a hard nut to crack. What works with other people just won't work with her. I'll help you get her there, but you have to do the rest. But just don't do anything stupid and I think you'll be OK. Can you promise me to NOT do anything stupid? You know, like last summer when you left her high and dry and walked away with the blonde bimbo on your arm?"

Castle cringed and got a wounded look on his face. "Don't remind me. I had enough dirty looks from that episode to last me a lifetime."

They talked for another 20 minutes, with Lanie and him deciding that it would be best for Lanie to explain the situation to Ryan and Esposito and tell them what their roles would be. Kate tended to get suspicious if she saw Castle talking to Ryan and Esposito, especially when it would be obvious that they were up to something since everyone knew they couldn't keep a secret like that to save their lives. Rick knew they'd go along with it, especially when she relayed the incentive of box tickets to the sporting event of their choice. Castle would make the arrangements and let Lanie know the details, and they would put the plans in motion with some prearranged code words.

Lanie left the bar first, and Castle ordered another drink as he began to make a few calls. After another 10 minutes, he threw some bills on the table and walked out of the bar, whistling. Yes, this was going to be supremely awesome. He just hoped that Kate came to that realization before she ended up killing him.

_So that's the end of Chapter 1. More to come, IF you think it's a story that you'd like to read more of. Can anyone guess what the surprise is? I hope you liked it so far!_


	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks so much for all of the great reviews of Chapter 1! I get the warm fuzzies when I see all of the people who like the story and are following it. I hope you all enjoy Chapter 2! Hopefully I can get chapter 3 to gel and will be able to post that soon._

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As George Peppard always said in that old ill-fated series The A Team, "I love it when a plan comes together." Castle felt a certain affinity with George Peppard's character right now. He had a plan, and his plan was coming together.

Kate Beckett was going to have a wonderful birthday, if he had anything to say about it.

But until then, he had to pretend like everything was normal, until it was showtime. He went into the precinct the next morning and got Beckett her coffee, as normal. He watched her do paperwork, as normal. He made a stupid bet on one of the basketball games with Ryan and Esposito, as normal. They even had a murder to look into, although it was a pretty simple murder to solve, as far as murders went: the disgruntled lover's family gardener. Well, the disgruntled lover's family gardener with a serious case of unrequited love for the disgruntled lover. Yeah, sometimes things got weird.

And actually, weird would help him in his quest to achieve the Beckett Birthday Bravado. That's what he had taken to calling it in his mind. It was much better to think of it that way, rather than you're-going-to-get-your-ass-kicked-when-she-figures-out-what-you've-done. That was still in the back of his mind, but he preferred to dwell on the positive. Dwelling on the positive was much more comfortable. But anyway, the weirdness of the last case would bode well in his favor because if Beckett got suspicious about anything, he could just (try to) put her off by saying that they've had stranger cases, take the last one, for example...

So, according to his plans, they were all set for tomorrow. It was three days before Beckett's actual birthday, so if she got suspicious, he could always shrug kit off because, after all, it was NOT her birthday. The story was written, accomplices were obtained, supporting items had been or would be delivered. He even had the contingency plan in place, as promised to Montgomery, in case he failed and couldn't convince her to go along with everything. But he wasn't going to think about that...bad thoughts be banished! This plan WAS going to work!

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick was so nervous and excited that he could hardly sleep that night. He hated the waiting. He was never good at waiting, obviously, since he could never even wait in the car even when Beckett threatened to shoot him. He was glad when morning came; now he could finally get moving with the plan. He was packed and ready. He had tried to think of every contingency. Before he went to the precinct, he would stop by the future 'scene of the crime' to familiarize himself with the layout and stash what he needed. He had the notes that he would need later to convince Kate to go along with his plans. He didn't know what they said, but all of the parties involved told him that if she said no after reading the notes, then it was all on him because they did what they could. Taking a deep breath, he walked out of his loft, locked the door, and made his way downstairs to start his journey on the Beckett Birthday Bravado, or the Big Beckett Birthday Bonanza. He smiled as he thought of it that way...Kate would roll her eyes and say that it was typical for a writer to use an alliteration like that. He absentmindedly wondered how many other alliterations he could come up with...

At noon, Rick would get Kate away from her desk for lunch. Luckily the chinese place down the street that she loved was having a buffet day. When she left, the others would scramble to handle their parts. Lanie had her assignment-to break into Beckett's apartment and grab the essentials. Well, she wouldn't actually be breaking in because she had a key, but it seemed more dramatic to put it that way, and Rick certainly liked a more dramatic flair to things. Then everyone would head to ground zero, where operation Big Beckett Birthday Bonanza (or Beckett Birthday Bravado, he just couldn't decide) would commence.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Beckett popped a wonton into her mouth and sighed contentedly. "Man, these are good. I love this place. It's actually kind of nice to eat it on a real plate instead of from a takeout container."

"Yes, I'd have to agree with you on that...the plate and the decor does add a certain ambience to the meal that's just lost when you're eating it out of cardboard at the station, while surrounded by the criminal element. Guess it's lucky that there were no bodies and your paperwork was light enough for you to get away."

"Yeah, you're right," she said absently as she looked up in the air as if she was thinking about something, before continuing. "It's actually kind of weird...I was supposed to go through all of these old cases to look for any discrepancies or potential problems with how they were handled. Had a decent stack of files on my desk. Now it's down to just a few, and nobody seems to know what happened to them. Nobody wants to do those old files...they're so boring. Who would just take them?"

Of course, this was part of the plan to lighten her workload, or make it appear lighter to increase the chances of her going along with the plan later, but he should have known that just removing the files would be too easy and she'd notice. They guys had been taking a few at a time since yesterday afternoon and hiding them in the storerroom. Seems like they got a little overzealous and took too many. But he only blanked out his face and replied "You're saying someone stole your files? Why?" And he took a bite of sweet and sour chicken.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "OK, why did you take them, Castle?"

Rick sat back and held up his hands, palms out. "Whoa, wait a minute! I didn't take your files. Why would I take your files? You know, just because something weird happens, it doesn't mean I did it. I should be offended," he finished haughtily.

"Oh, forget it. It's probably just part of some gag anyway. I'll probably get them back and and they'll all have pictures of naked guys in them or something."

"Oooooo...a little porno in the police files, huh?"

Beckett rolled her eyes at him and then reached down for her phone when it started ringing. "Beckett," she answered in her normal fashion. "Why there?...You're kidding...OK, fine. We'll be there soon." She snapped her phone shut and looked at Castle.

"We have a body."

And with those four words, Rick knew the plan was underway.

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_Hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think ( - that would be the polite request for reviews)!_


	3. Chapter 3

_I got such nice reviews from the first two chapters and have so many people following this story...I'm so glad you like it! I couldn't wait to post this so you could read the next chapter. I know some of you were waiting for more, and this was in my head and needed to come out. This is the easy part for me (since it was already gelled in my head), hence the quick update; the rest might be a bit harder for me to write from here, so please be patient. I didn't give everything away in this chapter, but a lot of the mystery has been revealed. Hope you all enjoy it!_

_I proofread and spell checked and it just found normal stuff like "Esposito" , so I hope nobody finds any other errors._

_I love reading the reviews, so please review (and hopefully say that you like it!)_

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Rick tried to draw on the acting genes that his mother always said she passed down to him. How did he normally act when they got word of a murder?

"Guess our lunch is over then. So where are we going?" He lowered his voice and asked "Is it creepy?"

"I don't know how creepy it is, Castle...Ryan didn't go into that." Kate explained as she ate the last bite of food on her plate and started getting ready to leave. "But he said we have to go to the private air charter terminal at LaGuardia. Apparently the DB is on a private plane. And I can't take my gun in there...some FAA thing."

"LaGuardia? That's not in your jurisdiction. Why do you have to go? Can't we stay and have some more wontons?" Castle tried to sound puzzled and a little put out that they couldn't stay, even though he knew full well what was going on. He even threw in a little bit of the sad puppy dog look.

"Apparently my team and I were requested for this one. Don't pout. Call came in to Montgomery. You know we help out other precincts sometimes. Who knows? Maybe they know about you shadowing me and they just wanted to meet you in person." She grabbed her coat. "Let's go."

After paying their bill, they walked out to the car. Beckett, of course, drove. Before getting in, she unholstered her gun and locked it in the case in the trunk. To pass the time, Castle got out his iPhone to check his messages. He had one from Lanie that simply said "A-OK", letting him know that her part of the plan was complete. He wanted to smile, but he didn't want to give Beckett anything to worry about. To further pass the time, he switched over to one of his games, one with a lot of shooting and explosion sound effects to keep Beckett mildly annoyed on the drive so she didn't think too much about where they were going, or why.

The drive to the airport wasn't too bad. They found the private air charter gate without too much problem and Beckett flashed her badge to the officer at the gate. Strangely, he waved her through and directed her to a plane at the far end of the tarmac, but without even checking to see if she was armed. Well, whatever...she had a DB she needed to get to.

They pulled up near a sleek-looking blue and white jet, the size of a small commuter plane. The steps were down and she could see Esposito and Ryan standing there by their car, waiting for her. There was another man in pilot's gear that was just entering the plane. As she got out of the car, she nodded her head toward the pilot and asked the guys "Is that a pilot? He looks like he's going somewhere. What's he doing in there anyway?"

Esposito and Ryan looked at each other. Castle stood in back of Kate, holding his breath. She wasn't supposed to see the pilot yet! Finally Esposito said "Uh, he was getting ready to take a trip somewhere and he found the DB when he was checking the plane. Guess the guy is in the back bedroom." Castle exhaled silently, relieved at Esposito's impromptu save.

Kate was annoyed. "Well he shouldn't be in there...he could contaminate the scene. Didn't anyone let him know that?"

Ryan took over. "Uh, yeah, we let him know, but he said he was just going to the cockpit and the DB is all the way at the back of the plane, and since he's the one who found the guy and was pretty shaken up about it and said he never wanted to see anything like that again, we figured it was OK and he wouldn't bother anything." As Ryan was rambling through his explanation, Castle noticed the sheen of nervous perspiration on his forehead, despite the cold temperatures, and he started holding his breath again.

Kate gave Ryan a glare. "Something wrong, Ryan? Did you have something for lunch that didn't agree with you?" Not waiting for an answer, she started up the steps to the plane. "I'm going to have a look at the DB. Let me know when Lanie gets here. Esposito, can you tell that pilot to stay put in the cockpit? Castle, you coming?"

Castle and Esposito trotted after her. Since Kate was far enough ahead of them, Castle said softly to Esposito "Nice save. Grab her purse out of the car and toss it in here. Then you're done. She left the keys in her car. Her gun is locked in the trunk. Wish me luck."

Esposito turned around softly and went back down the steps. Castle continued into the plane and saw Kate looking around and appreciating the decor of the private plane. "You fly on these things when you go on your book tours, Castle? I think I could get used to this. Man, how the other half lives," she finished softly. Without waiting for an answer, she continued down a short hallway to the back of the plane. She opened a door to reveal a bedroom. She turned around to find Castle several steps behind her, and not invading her personal space as he usually did. "What's wrong with you? Suddenly afraid of finding a little ol' dead body?" she chided with a small grin.

Rick quickly covered the few steps toward her. "I think the boys said the vic was in the back bedroom, right? Guess this is the back bedroom."

Kate walked into the room, intent on finding the victim and not paying attention to anything else, as Rick made a pretense of following her. However, after a few seconds, he took a note out of his pocket, set it on the bed, and backed out of the room and shut and locked the door soundlessly. He looked back toward the front of the plane to find the pilot, Ted, watching him. He gave Ted a thumbs-up and Ted began to shut the outside doors and lock down the plane.

By then Kate was checking the adjoining bathroom, and having found no victim, called back to Castle. "Castle, do you see anything? There's no body in the bedroom or the bathroom. What's going on..." Not hearing him, and obviously not feeling him behind her, she turned around to find...no Castle. Why did he shut the door to the bedroom? She started walking out and then she saw the note on the bed, with her name on it. Something was starting to feel off about this whole thing. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up.

Picking up the note, she glanced briefly back at the closed door before unfolding the note. Because she was fixated on the fact that Castle was not trailing after her and she had a note instead of a dead body, she didn't register the noises could start to be heard from the front of the plane, like the doors shutting and the engines starting. She read:

_"Dear Kate,_

_If you're reading this note, you've probably figured out that there's no body. There's not even been a crime. Well, yet. And I hope there won't be...what I mean is that I hope I won't be the victim of your crime. Please don't kill me._

_You might be a little mad now, but it will get better really soon, I promise. We're going to go for a little ride on this amazing private jet. It is amazing, isn't it? There's a chair over there in the corner, a really comfy leather seat with a seatbelt. Sit down in that chair and fasten your seatbelt for takeoff. The pilot will let you know when we've reached cruising altitude and it's safe to move about the cabin._

_If you need a stiff drink right about now, there's a little mini-bar right next to your seat. Feel free to use it._

_Once again, please just trust me. I do apologize for the subterfuge, but really, was there any other way to get you on this plane aside from the lure of a dead body? It will all be clear within about another 1/2 hour. And then you can decide what we do from here._

_So just sit back and enjoy. I'll see you in a bit. And please don't kill me when you do._

_Rick"_

Kate's eyes got bigger as she was reading the note, and her mouth hung open. Crumpling part of the note in her hand, she marched over to the door and gave it a tug, intending to march outside to find Castle and give him a piece of her mind, only to find the door locked. From the outside! She was locked in. Castle had locked her in this room!

She felt a soft lurch and realized they were moving. She ran the few steps to the window by the "comfy leather seat" that Castle had indicated in his letter. The plane was moving! Oh, my GOD!

A rustling noise got her attention, and she looked over to the door to see several numbered envelopes being pushed under the door. There were four of them. She saw the one marked "Open me first" and tore it open. Unfolding the note inside, she read:

_"Dear Kate,_

_Yes, you are locked in the room. Yes, we will be taking off. So yes, you REALLY need to sit down in that comfy chair and fasten your seatbelt or Ted, the pilot, will get very mad at me. He used to do stunt flying and he's threatened me that he'll do some wild stuff if you don't cooperate. And although I've taken my Dramamine, I really don't need Ted to do acrobatics to test it out. I really do not want to get airsick all over this beautiful plane. So please, do us both a favor and sit down. Now, before you even continue with the rest of this note."_

Because the plane was, after all, moving, and it was obvious that they were going to take off, Kate acquiesced and sat down. After she was settled in, she picked up the note and continued reading.

_"You see, two days ago, I found out that your birthday is coming up very soon. I feel really badly that in all of the time that I've known you, I've never done anything for you for your birthday. I never even knew when it was, and I've never even gotten you a measly cake. You have given me so much inspiration with my books (and my life) that I wanted to give something back to you, so I planned an amazingly awesome birthday surprise (if I do say so myself). This is the start._

_I'm taking you somewhere warm, so you can relax and get out of the New York winter and have some fun. I'll give you the exact destination a bit later. When was the last time you had a decent vacation? I've been around you for the better part of two years, and I can't really think of a time. So you're overdue. And it's your birthday, so it's the perfect time._

_The time off has been cleared with the Captain, so don't worry about that._

_But rest assured, even though everyone agrees that you need this and deserve this, you do have the option of backing out and coming home if you you want to, whenever you want. Just say the word. Although I hope you don't. All I ask is that you read the rest of the letters first before you make your final decision._

_Get comfortable and have a drink. And then read the rest of the letters, and I'm sure everything will become clearer to you._

_Rick"_

Kate looked out the window and noticed they were on the end of the runway. She put her head back in the seat (and yes, it really was a comfortable seat) and closed her eyes. She shouted "Castle!", just as the engines revved up and drowned out the sound of her exclamation. And before she knew it, she was airborne, locked in a room on an opulent private jet. By Rick Castle.

Man, she needed that drink now.

* * *

_That's it for Chapter 3. What did you think? Anyone want to guess what happens next? Please review...I greatly appreciate it and love to read them!_


	4. Chapter 4

**_Thanks for the awesome reviews! They make me want to write faster (to the point of neglecting my housework). I didn't plan to have this chapter done quite this soon, but I had to work on it because so many of you said you loved the story. So...thanks!_**

**_Some of you have pointed out the implausibility of this story, and yes, I do realize I'm stretching it. But hey, it's fiction. Dr. Seuss is fiction, but he's fun, so while I'm no Dr. Seuss, I thought a little fluffy fun would be nice. Although the kidnapping angle was bothering me just a teeny bit, so I tried to address that a bit in this chapter. I have no idea if I'm right or not, but once again, this is fluffy fiction, so who cares?_**

**_Enjoy, and let me know what you think!_**

* * *

Kate watched the ground speed by outside her window before she watched it get farther and farther away as the plane took off and gained altitude. She watched the familiar landmarks of New York City below her on the plane, but as she saw them, she realized that the plane was traveling north. Didn't Castle's letter say they were going somewhere warm? Why were they going north?

She looked at the letters in her lap. She wouldn't find out anything about their direction until Castle decided to unlock the door, so she might as well read the letters. She looked at the one marked 'Open Second'. Slipping her fingernail under the open end of the flap, she ripped it open and was surprised when she took out the letter inside to reveal Lanie's handwriting. Wondering what part Lanie had played in this escapade, she began reading her letter.

_"Kate,_

_I imagine you probably want to kill Castle right now. But honey, think about it...really THINK about it before you even get a little mad at him. Look at what he had to do to pull this off. Lining us all up to help him? A private jet? Getting you time off from work? Did I mention the private jet? And he did all of that because IT'S YOUR FREAKING BIRTHDAY! Know any other guys that you're not (officially) dating that would jet you off to a tropical paradise for your birthday? Didn't think so._

_Really, don't be too hard on him. If he had asked, would you have let him have a chance? I know you, and the answer is a big fat no. You should have seen him when he asked me to help him...he was so excited. Yes, he's like a little kid sometimes. But it was so sweet to watch him make all of these plans, all for YOU, everything so you would feel comfortable and stress free and pampered. It gave me warm fuzzies in my stomach to see how much he wanted to do this for you, how much he was looking forward to it. Man, most women would kill for a handsome rich guy to kidnap them and fly them to a tropical paradise on a private jet._

_Want to know my part? He had me go to your apartment and pack for you, so you'd have some of your own things with you. Most guys wouldn't care or wouldn't even stop to consider that. But he did. By the way, your suitcase is in the closet._

_Girl, just go with this. Don't come back home until you've at least seen what he has planned for you. He said he'd bring you back any time, and you know you can trust him on that. You know that. So go, see what he has planned, and have some fun. If he had been my shadow for the last two years and whisked me away like this, man, I would have a hard time not jumping his bones right on the plane!_

_And if I haven't convinced you yet, then let me remind you about last summer when he left for the Hamptons with that bimbo. How did you feel then? Lost opportunities, girl...remember that. You were ready to put it out there then but you waited too long. Now you have another chance. Don't blow it._

_Give him a chance. I don't think you'll be sorry._

_L._

_PS-I'm expecting some juicy details when you get back."_

Kate placed the letter on her lap and exhaled nervously. Wow. Lanie certainly didn't beat around the bush. Castle had quite a fan in Lanie. She picked up letter #3, opened it, and began reading.

_"Kate,_

_You need a vacation and you need to start using some vacation time anyway, before you lose it. Castle promised me that you'd be able to back out if you wanted, or come home whenever you wanted to. I wouldn't have gone along with this any other way. Use the time. I've cleared you for two weeks. Have fun._

_Montgomery"_

Short, sweet, to the point. Thinking back to the call that got her there, she supposed that he would have had to have been in on the plan too. And appeared to be in favor of it too, as long as she had an out, which everyone seemed to be certain that she did. There was still one more letter, and she was on a roll, so she opened it, already expecting a healthy dose of Castle-envy if her guess was correct as to the author of this one.

_"Beckett,_

_You let him win the bet. Duh._

_-JE"_

Esposito's letter was about as short as it could get, but it also reminded her of the thing that only he had figured out: she let Castle win that bet right after he came back from the Hamptons, the bet which let him keep working with her. And, of course, he had a point...why did she do something to keep him around if she didn't want him around? Leave it to Esposito to cut to the chase and make it simple.

She looked out the window at the sunlight streaming above the clouds. They were up pretty high...how long had she been reading, and thinking? Lanie and Esposito did make good points, but she wasn't totally on board with his methods. Plain and simple, he tricked her. But actually, they all did. Ugh. What should she do? She wasn't mad anymore, per se, but was...shocked. It was absolutely unreal to think that she was in the situation that she was in...locked in a room on a private jet, flying to somewhere tropical? With a rich, famous author? Unreal. But all she had to do was look out the window to know that it was real. Very real. And now she had to figure out what to do about her new reality. But she just didn't like being tricked.

Just then, she heard a knock at the door, and it slowly opened. Nobody stepped into the room, but instead an umbrella with a white towel on the end was stuck into the open doorway. The 'flag' operator started waving the flag around as if to surrender. Kate chuckled at the cheesy display. "Come on in, Castle. I'm not going to kill you. Yet. Besides, you made me leave my gun on the ground, I'm not in the mood for hand to hand combat, and throwing you out of the plane would just depressurize the whole thing anyway."

Rick walked into the room and held up a hand. "First of all, let me say that we are still over New York State, so I don't think I've broken any laws by taking you over state lines against your will. However, we'll be out of New York airspace soon, so I need to know if you want to go back to LaGuardia, or if you are going to let me continue on with your birthday surprise as a willing participant."

"Ah, so that's why we're going north...so you could keep me in the state. Smart thinking, Castle." With that, she gave him a pointed glance, got up out of the comfy seat and walked toward the front of the plane. Rick followed her, watching her look around at all of the decor on the plane. After a full couple of minutes, she turned around and leveled a glare on Rick, a glare that was intense enough to make him squirm. It was the same glare she used in interrogations, and while it was fun to see her use it on the perps, he found that it wasn't so fun being on the receiving end of it. Just seeing the glare directed at him made him start to worry that the Beckett Birthday Bonanza was about to go up in flames and then down the toilet.

But nothing about her demeanor prepared him for what she said when she finally spoke:

"So, Ricky, just where are you taking me?"

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**_That's it for now! Hope you enjoyed this chapter!_**


	5. Chapter 5

**_First, thanks for all of the wonderful reviews! I'm so glad that so many people are reading it and enjoying it, and I so appreciate you taking the time to tell me that you liked it (and what you like). _**

**_This is my longest chapter yet. I have an image in my head of the scene, and what the characters are doing, so I'm trying to paint that picture with the dialog and the background info/thoughts so you can, hopefully, see the same picture. I'm really enjoying writing this, although I have to admit that past this chapter, I don't have much planned yet. I honestly don't know yet how this will turn out. I do know, however, that they will NOT fall into bed together or declare their undying love for each other anytime soon. That just never seems realistic to me for these characters, especially when it took them until season 3 before they even held hands, even in just a friendship sort of way. So anything that might happen will be subtle and slow._**

**_I will most likely not be able to update this story for a couple of days; I'm going somewhere where I won't have any internet access except for on my phone, and I CANNOT compose a story on that little thing. So I'll only be able to read reviews and write new chapter(s), but I won't be able to upload anything unless I can find some public wifi. (of course, I might try harder to find wifi if I had some incentive...LOL)_**

**_I hope you enjoy the latest chapter!_**

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Rick was so nonplussed by her sharp glare that her words didn't register at first. "You...What?" he stammered.

Kate adopted the air of a 19th century schoolmarm dressing down the little boys who dipped the little girls' pigtails in the inkwells. "I said," she began haughtily, "where are we going? You got me here under false pretenses, you got my friends and coworkers to pull a fast one on me, you locked me in a room on a private plane and flew me up somewhere over the state of New York. You got the aforementiond friends and coworkers to write letters singing your praises-I swear, Castle, the four of them are like little Richard Castle groupies...what did you bribe them with anyway?" He opened his mouth to reply and she put up a hand to stop him. "Never mind, I don't think I want to know. But everyone seems to think I should go with you, and I'm here, and this is definitely better than coach class. Plus I figure you owe me for last summer when you ditched me at the last minute and took Gina to the Hamptons instead. So yeah, I'll go. But where are we going?"

During her speech, Kate had slowly been walking back toward Rick. With her final question, she stopped a mere foot from him, looking him almost in the eye because of the heels she habitually wore. It was the same position they had been in countless times as they both bantered back and forth about cases, each finishing the other's sentences, until they figured out the mystery and identified the culprit.

Rick was starting to get that giddy feeling back. She said yes! She actually said yes! She had agreed to go with him. Since he thought of this idea, he hadn't, deep down, really let himself even go this far, to imagine her actually _willingly_ going with him. He loved the idea of her being there, and while he could certainly imagine walking on a beach with her, it was more in terms of an unobtainable fantasy rather than a potential reality. But now, it seemed that she really WAS going to go with him. With any luck, that fantasy would be able to meet the reality. If he didn't blow it first.

Rick looked at her, staring slightly up at him, and he uttered one word. "Guess." His narrowed eyes and the tone of the one word picked up her challenge, and their usual bantering began.

Her eyes never wavering, she said "The Caymans. There's the criminal element of the untraceable bank accounts that would make it a logical choice for you."

"Wrong."

"Jamaica."

"Puh-leeze. That's so 90s."

"Aruba."

"Nope."

"Bahamas."

"Beckett, think about it. No passports. I have no idea if you even have a passport."

"You planned for everything else."

"I draw the line at fake passports."

"I have a real one, thank you."

"Well, not here. Next guess?"

"Castle, I'll shoot you if you're taking me to do movie touristy stuff in LA."

"No gun, remember? But no."

"Disneyworld. I can really see you in mouse ears."

"No, but closer."

"Ah...Florida."

"Bingo, but where in Florida, Detective?"

"Miami?"

"No."

"The Keys?"

"No. One more guess...and if you don't get it, you'll just have to wait until we get there. But trust me, it's great. You'll love it."

"Daytona Beach?"

He made a sound like a game show buzzer. "Wrong again. And I wouldn't make you hang out in a cheap college drinking destination anyway. And you're out of guesses until we land." As much as he loved going toe-to-toe with her like that, he had one more piece of business to settle with the pilot so he stepped around her and motioned to the cockpit. "Excuse me for a moment, Detective. I have to have a word with the pilot to let him know we can continue on with our journey. I'll be right back...have a seat in one of these comfy chairs." He gestured toward the chairs with a dramatic flourish. "The black ones even recline."

While he was gone, she did indeed sit in one of the black chairs. Wow...right again. Comfy was certainly accurate...too bad she couldn't get one of these for her house. She leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes and listened to the hum of the jet's engines. She couldn't really believe it, but she was actually getting used to the idea of being Castle-napped. And it was barely an hour into her journey. She really had no idea why she wasn't screaming at Castle (or punching him) and demanding to be taken back to LaGuardia. Had she actually agreed to go with him? When she told him she'd go along with him, he'd looked so incredulous, like HE expected her to be screaming at him (or punching him) too. In the letters, he DID ask her not to kill him, so presumably the thought that she would be angry with him-really angry-did go through his mind. Yet he still went ahead with his plans. And here she was, very quickly getting used to the idea of being essentially kidnapped by a famous millionnaire and whisked away on a private jet to a tropical vacation, the destination of which was still a secret. Oh, what a hoot! It sounded like a freaking soap opera! With a smile, she realized Lanie was right; most women would probably kill to be in her shoes right now. Was that why she acquiesced so easily?

As she sat there, images of sandy beaches started to invade her mind. How long has it been since she'd been to the beach? Wow...too long. She didn't even know if she had any decent beachwear. And that thought made her wonder what Lanie packed for her. If she couldn't even remember what she even had, how would Lanie have been able to pack it? No matter...she could always pick up something whereever they were going. Couldn't she? She almost laughed as she realized again that she had absolutely no idea where she was headed, aside from the state of Florida. But it didn't freak her out. She was in Castle's hands, and it didn't freak her out. WHY? She supposed it had something to do with the fact that she really had to give him some credit...being the writer that he was, he could definitely set a scene. Geez, this was weird. And she knew, somehow, that if he went to that much effort to plan this and get her here, if she needed something he would definitely find a way to get it for her. Wow.

She opened her eyes as she heard some movement around her again. Castle was evidently back from the cockpit. "Ted said that we have about a flight time of a little over three hours. So far the weather looks good. So what do you say to a little wine? I brought a nice little red from my private stash at the loft."

She looked from him to the wine. "Oh, hell, why not? Nothing else about my day is turning out like I thought it would. I might as well have some wine to christen the abrupt deviation my normal existence has taken."

Rick poured the wine and handed her a glass. She sniffed it, took a test sip and said "Hmmm...not bad." Then Rick watched in amazement as she tipped her head back, downed the glass in a couple of gulps, then held it out for a refill. "More," she stated simply. Rick complied and refilled her glass, which had her repeating the chugfest.

"Uh...Beckett? You OK?"

"Sure...peachy. Why do you ask?"

"Uh, nothing...just that you're chugging my vintage red like it's a can of Coors at a college frat party."

"Got a problem with that? Thanks to you, I'm not on duty, am I?"

"No...uh...no." Rick was definitely not used to this side of Beckett. He filled up her glass again when she held it out.

"So, Castle, what are we going to do for the next three hours? And not THAT," she said when he raised his eyebrows. "Geez, get your mind out of the gutter for once."

Castle sipped his wine. "OK, if that's off the table-although _on_ the table might be interesting," (earning an eye roll from Kate), "then how about we talk about the Big Beckett Birthday Bonanza."

Kate almost spit out her wine and started coughing. "The WHAT?"

Rick looked abashed. "Whoops...did I say that out loud?" At her nod, he continued "Oh. Well. Uh, I needed a name for this whole plan...I'm a writer, after all. It was a big plan so it has to have a cool name; I can't just call it something boring. So I went with the alliteration. It worked for me. Unless you'd prefer the Beckett Birthday Bravado?"

Kate leaned her head back in her chair, closed her eyes and shook her head from side to side. "Lord, help me please," she said to no one in particular. She opened her eyes then and looked at Castle. "Please tell me that I'm not going to be frequently subjected to alliterations, limericks, tongue twisters or any other spoken language oddity? Or, so help me Castle, you can turn this plane around right now."

Castle held up a hand. "No more alliterations or tongue twisters. Scout's honor."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Were you ever a boy scout?"

"Well, nooooo, but I can still borrow their honor. The honor is universal. You don't mess with the honor."

He then gave her the famous smile that he used for publicity photos. "So getting back on track, is there anything you've always wanted to do? Surfing? Parasailing? Skinny-dipping with a famous author?"

Beckett's jaw dropped and she feigned a starstruck look. "Wow, Castle...you mean Patterson is coming along with us? And I can skinny-dip with him? Oooooo..."

Castle gave her a wry smile. "Very funny, Beckett. Very funny." He took a sip of his wine and sat forward with an earnest look on his face. "But really, anything you've always wanted to try? Because this is your birthday trip. If you want to do something, let me know and consider it done."

Kate thought about it as she swirled the rest of her wine in the glass. "Not really sure right now. I mean, this is all still pretty new to me." She sighed and looked right at him. "Castle, for heaven's sake, three hours ago we were eating Chinese down the street from the precinct. Now we're on a private jet bound for who knows where. I don't even know where I'm going! How can I even realistically think about this? Part of me is still wondering if I'm really here...or if this is some strange dream. Maybe you drugged my egg drop soup and I'm really having a hallucination."

Castle looked over at her with an odd look on his face and said softly, "You have to know that anything you want, I'll get for you." He looked at her so seriously that she had no choice but to believe him, and she nodded wordlessly. Seemingly satisfied with her response, he leaned back in his chair and looked out one of the tiny windows. Kate followed suit, and they sat silently, sipping their wine, lost in their own thoughts as they watched the different shapes made by the fluffy clouds below them.

"Kate?" Rick said softly a while later, breaking the silence.

Even though she could feel the wine relaxing her, she was immediately on guard by the way he said her name, and by the mere fact that he used her first name instead fo the more impersonal last name moniker that most of the department used for her. "Yes?" she responded.

"What did you mean when you said that I ditched you last summer?"

Kate felt a small lurch in the vicinity of her stomach. Oh, shit. When he came back last fall, he had gleaned on his own that she and Demming had broken up. He'd always assumed that they'd dated for a while during the summer, and neither she nor anyone else had ever enlightened him that Kate had ended it with him right before his going away party, or that she was indeed going to go with him to the Hamptons...until his ex-wife showed up. She was prepared for that information to come out, somehow, sometime; probably from Lanie or Esposito, actually, since they were the most aware of what had happened and really wanted Castle to feel some hurt for the Gina thing. But then, as they started working together, the old comraderie was back, and they were even more comfortable with each other. And as they grew more comfortable, the topic of the past summer and how he left never came up again. Of course, it was still always in the back of HER mind, which probably led her to make that offhanded comment earlier. Oh, double shit. Why did he have to bring that up now?

She had to say something. She decided flip would be best. "Oh, you know, you know, how you got tired of us and wanted to spend the summer playing with the Ritchie Riches in the Hamptons."

The look on his face told her that her flip comment didn't work. "Kate, come on. That wasn't what you meant. I know there's more to it, but I'm not sure what. You were saying that I owed you because I ditched you and went to the Hamptons with Gina. What did you mean by that? I mean, I didn't ditch you. I'd never do that, I hope you know that. You didn't want to go with me. You told me you had work and no vacation time, but I know that you went away with Demming and you just didn't want to tell me about it. And that's fine, although I really hope he didn't hurt you when he broke up with you. But I never ditched you...I _always_ wanted you to come along with me. So what did you mean about me ditching you?"

She knew she wasn't going to get out of this one. She took a deep breath and held out her glass for more wine. After taking a couple of long sips for fortification, she looked right at him, with a sort of fire burning in her eyes, and dropped a bombshell on him.

"Castle, remember your party?" He nodded. "When I was talking to you right before you left, I was about to tell you that I WAS going to go with you. I...I'd just broken up with Demming. To go with you. To the Hamptons. I was laying it all out there, trying to tell you-and it was hard for me, you know?-and right before I could get the words out of my mouth, in saunters your ex-wife, hanging all over you, and talking about keeping on top of you all summer, and you're all smug and happy. And you turned around and walked out. And you never called, not once. Yeah, it really felt like you ditched me." She got up and started walking to the back of the plane. "Excuse me for a bit. I'm going to see what Lanie packed for me."

She left Castle sitting there, feeling poleaxed. He looked at her retreating back, the shock of what she said making his facial features slack. Belatedly, he realized that it wasn't fire in her eyes as she admitted that, but hurt. Oh, man. How was he going to dig himself out of this?

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_**Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think!**_


	6. Chapter 6

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_**I'm back, and following is chapter 6 of this little saga. I'm kind of worried about how it will be received by all of you wonderful people who have been following (and liking) this fic, because I think it's a bit different in tone than the other chapters. We took a slight detour from fluffy and fun, but I hope (crossing my fingers) that it's still OK. With how I ended the last chapter, I felt that there was only one logical direction that this chapter could go, and this is the way it needed to happen.**_

_**After thinking about this weird (but entertaining) relationship of theirs, I came to the conclusion that both of them are deluding themselves into thinking that they're not really as close as they are, yet they keep working together, etc. Neither one of them thinks that anything more than a casual work relationship, maybe friendship, is going on between them. And really, it's not...yet. But they just don't let themselves think in those terms, or even think about the potential, even though everything they do looks to others like they are involved. Very little romantic stuff-about each other-consciously enters their thought processes, although they keep trying to be together, and he keeps pulling her pigtails, and she keeps getting annoyed with him. Sure, the innuendo is there, mostly from his side, but that's just how he is. In writing this chapter, I also formulated a little hypothesis about why Kate let Castle back in so easily at the beginning of season 3; why she let him win the bet. (Can you tell I had a hard time falling asleep last night?) So I wrote this chapter from that viewpoint.**_

_**This is now officially my longest chapter. I hope you like it, and if you don't, please, please be kind.**_

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Rick sat there for a while after Kate dropped her bombshell. He didn't really know how long. He didn't get up to follow her, even though part of him told him to. But he had no idea what in the world he would say to her right now, because his mind was reeling at what she said.

She had been ready to go away with him. He had been trying for so long to get her to see him as more than an annoyance, and it seemed now that she had, although he had been too self-absorbed to see it.

Logically, he knew that they weren't dating...weren't anything even remotely close to dating. He knew what they

_weren't_, but he wasn't really sure what they _were_. Friends? Yes, he could call them friends. Business associates? Probably, in a very loose sense. There was more than that though, but to put a label on that 'more'...well, that's when it got kind of fuzzy for him. Sure, they flirted, or something like that. He wasn't really sure he could call it that, although he knew that everyone else did. She had called it 'pulling my pigtails'. Somewhere during all of this, she had started acting like she was starting to value Castle's opinions, like she thought he provided some value to her team. They were really starting to work well together; like he was becoming more of a Robin to her Batman instead of just an annoying tagalong shadow to the Super Mega Cop. Batman always had Robin with him and counted on Robin's help, and Kate was starting to treat Rick like that.

But then she started dating Demming, and _he_ was there so much. _He_ was with them on cases. _He_ was always around. She smiled at _him. __He_ made her laugh. _He_ even had started bringing her coffee. And when it came time for a weekend away, _he_ got the nod from Beckett, and Castle was left in the dust. Rick didn't like to think that what he was feeling was jealousy, because that would imply that what he and Beckett had was like a...romantic relationship? No, that wasn't right. But why did it feel like jealousy then? Why did he get sort of a sick feeling in his stomach when he saw them together?

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision that he made, to take the summer off. When he realized that she was getting more serious with Demming, and how much it affected him, he knew he had to get away. He couldn't really pull her pigtails with Demming around. She didn't smile at Rick as much. Hell, she didn't even need Rick to get her coffee anymore. So he did the only thing he felt he could do-for his sanity as much as for her benefit-he got out of Dodge. Cold turkey...no more cases, no more pulling of pigtails, no more Beckett.

He remembered it clearly: he made the decision, and then he walked around the city for a couple of hours to clear his head. The precinct, the cases, the detective...they had all become so much a part of his life over the last two years; he knew it would be hard to get used to a new normal without all of those things again. So he tried to justify the decision in his own mind: he called Gina to tell her about going to the Hamptons to work on the book, uninterrupted. As they talked, he 'put on a happy face' and injected enthusiasm that he really didn't feel into his words. And he and Gina had actually had a decent talk. And before he knew it, he'd invited her to come along. The way he saw it at the time, what was the harm? He had to work with her anyway, and she had a vested interest in him getting the book done. And he knew her, and had no illusions about her. Even if Gina wanted to bring a guy with her, he really didn't care. She could bring a whole gang of male strippers and he really wouldn't have cared...he just wanted someone else there to keep the walls from echoing, and to keep him from remembering who was NOT there, and where that person who was not there really was. Basically, Gina was a comfortable diversion, and he needed a comfortable diversion if he was going to have a chance to find and get used to that new normal.

He was wallowing in his own pitiful mood that day, so much so that he couldn't see that Beckett was trying to tell him something. Thinking back, knowing what he knew now, he could see that there was more going on than what he would let himself see at the time. He was just trying to put on his happy face and get out of there as fast as he could while keeping his dignity intact. If he could have-would have-stopped to look, just even a little closer at her... He closed his eyes and groaned, thinking how things could have turned out so much differently.

He thought back to what Lanie had said when he tried to enlist her help: "...when you left her high and dry and walked away with that blonde bimbo...". He had always thought all of the dirty looks he got when he came back were from just not calling for the summer. He never knew there was more to it, but now Lanie's comment took on new meaning and made perfect sense. She had known...they had all known. And they were all mad at him for the way he left things, even though he didn't know the full extent of what had happened. And nobody ever told him. Of course, he never gave them a chance to tell them. He walked out, with Gina, and then he never called, and by the time he got back the damage had already been done. But now he knew, so he just had to try to figure out how to make it right...if he could make it right.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate walked back into the bedroom that she had been locked into at the beginning of the trip. She sat down on the bed. When she woke up this morning, there was no way that she would have ever imagined that today would be the day that she would reveal to Castle that she was planning to go with him last summer, and that she had broken up with Demming just to do that. Of course, she never would have imagined that she would be kidnapped on a private plane bound for an unknown location either. The kidnapping, she could handle. Revealing the truth to Castle? That was the one that she wished she could hit the 'undo' button for.

She remembered how stunned she felt when he announced that he was taking a break, for the whole summer. She realized in that moment how much she had come to count on him, how she just expected, after a while, that he would be there, how she, in actuality, took him for granted. Thank goodness for Esposito, who pushed her into facing a few things head on, who encouraged her to take a chance. Even though the chance didn't work out, she was still glad she had taken it, even thought it had been just a little bit too late.

And maybe that was that experiece that had her here today, and had her playing along with Castle and actually agreeing to go with him, and if she was truthful with herself, actually looking forward to it. Like Lanie had said in her letter, lost opportunities. Kate had learned a hard lesson about that last year, about denying to herself what she wanted. She had fun with Castle, if that made sense, even though he did irritate her. And he very much enjoyed irritating her. But he WAS helpful, and even the irritations kept her on her toes. Like when he sprayed the male strippers with the fire extinguisher, she thought with a smile (even though she didn't smile then). It was actually pretty funny when she looked back on it now. But there was always something that held her back from really enjoying her time with him. He was so unorthodox. Even though she was a fan, she didn't want to be a groupie fan who hung on his every word, or hung on him. That wasn't her. She was serious. He was not. She lived in the real world, and he lived in some...alternate reality that involved name dropping, a lot of money and, it seemed at times, not a lot of real-world reality.

But as time went on, without her knowing it, he got a bit more serious about things, and she got a bit less. They formed a good team; they complemented each other. But then Tom Demming started sniffing around her, and she thought, hey, why not? He's cute, he's a cop and he annoyed Castle. That was, initially, a small part of the lure of dating him at first-he annoyed Castle. She didn't want to answer the question of why Demming annoyed Castle, or of why she tried to use Demming to annoy him. It was innocent, the way it started out anyway, and she really did like Tom. But then she realized when Castle said he was going away and when Esposito talked to her that it had gone too far, and that whatever she got out of her relationship with Demming was not worth the price of Castle leaving. (And she realized, too, that she was _using_ Demming, and that wasn't really cool with her personal ethics.) But it turned out to be too little, too late: she didn't get to Castle soon enough. And then the joke was on her, because Castle had followed her example and had found someone too.

So even though she told Castle that he ditched her, she still knew that some of the blame for this whole situation was hers. And that made her mad too. And she didn't like being mad at herself.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Her excuse of looking at the suitcase forgotten, she was still sitting there several minutes later when Rick walked slowly into the room and sat on the edge of the bed a few feet away from where she sat. "Kate, I...we probably need to talk. Or, at least...I need to talk. About...what you said before..."

Kate held up a hand. "No, Castle, it's all right. It's done. There's no point in rehashing what happened, and what never even did happen. There were things that we both could have...should have done differently, but we didn't, and it's in the past now."

Rick slowly shook his head. "Yes, we do have to talk. Or I have to talk. We have to get this out there. Because ever since I came back at the end of last summer, there's always been the elephant in the room. I never could see the elephant, but I knew it was there. When you all first saw me in that apartment with the dead sculptor, you cuffed me, the guys called me slimebag, and Ryan almost shot me. Later, Montgomery just glared at me. You told me to go back to the Hamptons and my ex-wife. I never knew what I did, aside from not calling. But now I know there was so much more. They all knew about...what you just told me, didn't they?"

She looked at him, and nodded silently. He threw back his head looked at the ceiling. "I knew it! I knew there was something...different. Something had changed when I came back, but I didn't know what. Nobody seemed to like me anymore. Now, it makes sense."

Kate was silent, so he took a breath and labored on. "Kate, this isn't an excuse, but let me just try to explain something, OK?" Without really waiting for an answer, he continued. "This last year, we were working together so well. I felt like I was really contributing, really helping, and that you wanted me around. That you valued my input. That meant so much to me. It went beyond the Nikki Heat novels. We had a...cameraderie building between us." At her miniscule nod, his voice lowered. "And then Demming came into the picture."

He paused for a second, and she looked down at her hands in her lap, even when he started talking again. "I didn't really like him, he was just too...well, something. But you wanted to be around him. More than me. And he brought you coffee, and you didn't listen to my input as much, and that stung a bit. And everything was changing. I missed it, our relationship, so I invited you to my house in the Hamptons. Thought maybe we could just relax, and get that cameraderie back or something. And you told me you couldn't go, but then you decided to go with Demming, and you made some excuse about not knowing how to tell me, how it would be awkward." Kate closed her eyes, as if remembering but wishing she could forget.

Castle touched her shoulder. "Kate, it's OK, really." He let his hand drop and then continued. "But I knew at that point that I just couldn't be around here anymore, watching you...with him. I was disappointed, felt like I was a third wheel, on a sinking ship, so to save face, I grabbed the first life preserver that I could find, and I told you that I was going away for the summer. Honestly? It was spur of the moment. I almost didn't plan to say it, and then there it was, out there. And I couldn't take it back, and after a minute, I realized it was the solution to our problems. You didn't want me around anymore-" immediately Kate began to protest, but Castle held up a hand and continued "or so I thought at the time. So I would just leave, and then you wouldn't have to worrry about me, and I wouldn't have to watch you with Demming. Inside? Inside I was pretty depressed about the whole thing. Do you get it, a little? Where I was coming from?" he asked her. She gave a little shrug for her response. "I really didn't want to leave. I really didn't want to go to the house alone. So I called Gina to tell her I was going to finish the book, because I knew that she would be happy about that, and then I could make at least _someone_ happy." He smiled ruefully, a smile-that-wasn't-really-a-smile. "And again, like when I told you I was going away for the summer, the invitation was out of my mouth before I really knew it, and she was coming along with me. At the time, it guess it just seemed logical. I didn't want to be alone at the house all summer, and she needed me to finish the book, so...you know. I needed the distraction of just having someone else there. That was all."

He stopped his explanation for a moment and it seemed as though he was contemplating his next words, choosing them carefully. He put his hand on her shoulder again before continuing. "Kate, if I had had a shred of hope that you were going to change your mind and come with me, I would have probably jumped for joy and done a happy dance right there in the precinct. And I never, ever would have even _thought_ of calling Gina." They sat and looked at each other for several long moments, Rick's hand still on Kate's shoulder. When he continued, his voice was soft and thoughtful. "I can't apologize enough for not listening to you that last day. My primary focus was to keep up the pretense that everything was great and that I really wanted to be leaving. I was so concerned with getting away from there that I didn't stop to listen to you." He took his hand away from her shoulder and flopped backwards on the bed. "I will forever be sorry for that. And if I had listened, I would never have gone away. At least, not with Gina."

Kate let the silence linger for a few minutes before she spoke. "Castle, that day was a bitch and a half, I won't lie to you about that. Part of what burned me up is that I was so nervous about telling you..." At his raised eyebrows, she continued, "yes, I was nervous. It's not something I care to broadcast, or even admit, but I feel more comfortable interrogating a serial killer than dealing with personal...stuff. But anyway, I was nervous anyway, and then you ended up walking away with Gina."

He opened his mouth and she held up her hand to stop him. "No, now it's my turn. So just shut up and listen, Castle. It was...a very bad day, I'll give you that. But after you were gone for a while, I realized that I was partly to blame, and even though you walked away, with that bimbo"-she emphasized the last word with a look of distaste-"I did have some fault in how it all played out." At his quizzical look, she plowed on. "Demming. He was a nice guy and I liked him. But I finally saw that part of the reason that I was seeing him was because it was so obvious that you did NOT like him." She paused for effect. "Castle, I was pulling _your_ pigtails."

As realization dawned on his face, his eyes got big and his mouth fell open just a bit. She gave him a wry little smile. "So by the time I realized that the Demming thing wasn't going where I wanted it to go, and had decided to take you up on your offer, it was a bit too late." She decided to leave out the part about what Esposito said to her the night Castle told her he was leaving. "Like I said, that day was a bitch. I'd just broken up with a really nice guy. And then everything else...happened."

Castle found his words once again, and Beckett didn't stop him. "I get it. I so get it now. It was one heck of a big mess, Detective. A humongous dose of bad timing. Over a little weekend getaway! But I have one question...you said you lost some of your anger after a while; why did you still seem so mad at me when you saw me again?"

"You didn't call. A few weeks, or even a month, was one thing. But the whole summer, and into the fall? For all of us? You never called, even when it was obvious that you'd been back in town for some time."

He closed his eyes. "I know. In hindsight, it was stupid. I'll never do that again. Believe me, if I have battery life in my phone, I will keep in contact with you and everyone else. From now on. Scout's honor." he said with a wink, referring to their previous conversation.

Kate looked down at the floor, contemplating everything they had talked about. He got up and paced to the other side of the room, running his fingers through his hair as he walked, before coming back and taking his previous spot on the edge of the bed. "What an awesomely huge mess," he summarized.

"Got that right." she agreed.

"At least we got it out in the open now. That's good."

"It's certainly one way to pass time on a plane trip."

"Not my favorite. I can think of other," he waggled his eyebrows at her with an evil grin on his face, "far more enjoyable ways to pass the time." Getting his meaning, she swatted him on the shoulder. "He never gives up," she mumbled to herself, rolling her eyes.

After a few moments, Kate looked up at Rick and exhaled a long breath. "So where do we go from here?"

Rick looked down at her hand in her lap, and reached out and clasped it with one of his. His hand gave hers a gentle squeeze, and then he smiled at her warmly.

"That's an easy one. We go to Florida," he replied, as she returned her own tentative smile to him.

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******__****Thank you for reading! I promise that the plane will actually land in the next chapter. It has to be the longest plane ride in fanfic history. **

_**I hope you enjoyed it, but like I said, if you didn't, please be gentle. Please review!**_


	7. Chapter 7

_**Thank you for the great reviews for the last chapter! I was worried about it, but judging from the response so far, the worry was for nothing. However, if you didn't review and you'd still like to, I certainly will not mind reading more...**_

_**Good reviews just rev my writing adrenalin...I was so happy that you liked the last chapter that I wrote this just this morning. The plane has been traveling to Florida for the last week (in my story, anyway). Think we should get there already? **_

_**Now, on to the good stuff: the big location reveal!**_

* * *

After their talk, the two passengers on the plane realized that they had a bottle of wine to finish. They were both still a little out-of-sorts from the abrupt turn that the conversation had taken, so when Beckett saw her wine glass sitting on the table, she asked Castle for a bit more wine, if he had some left. Grateful for the diversion, Castle jumped up and retrieved the wine, and they both settled in once more to the main area of the plane.

It seemed that they talked so much before that now they were at a loss about what to say to each other. Finally, Castle got a gleam in his eye and snapped his fingers. "Got it!" he announced, and after rummaging around in a cupboard, he found a pad of paper and a pen.

Kate looked at him suspiciously. "What...you're gonna start writing your books longhand again?"

"No...better! I told you that you were out of guesses as to our destination until we land. But I never said anything about hints!"

"Okaaaayyyy...so I can't guess, but you're going to give me hints. So tell me, Castle, what exactly is the point of a hint if the end result cannot be the ability to guess something?"

He pursed his lips like an irritated headmaster. "Just go with it, Beckett. This is your vacation." Then he changed his demeanor. "We're playing hangman, and you have to guess. Each of the words will be a clue to where we will be going." He busied himself with drawing the spaces for the letters and the noose that the 'man' would be hung from, if Beckett didn't guess right.

"Hangman?" she asked incredulously.

"Of course. It's a classic game of passing time. I'm ready. What's your first guess?"

"Castle, I don't want to play hangman."

"What's wrong, Detective? Are you afraid your detecting skills won't let you figure out my words?"

She glared at him. "Fine. K."

"K? What kind of a letter is that for the first guess?" he asked in mock outrage. "You have to use a vowel or R, S, T, N or L. Don't you ever watch 'Wheel of Fortune'?"

"It happens to be the first letter of my name. Duh, Castle. And exactly WHEN would I watch 'Wheel of Fortune?' I have a job. I don't have time for daytime television. Now is there a K or not?"

"I'll have you know that there is an evening version of 'Wheel of Fortune'. No K," he said as he drew the head. "Drink."

"Excuse me?"

"You didn't get the letter right. So you have to drink. If you get a letter right, then I have to drink."

"You're making Hangman into a drinking game?"

"Beckett, you can make any game into a drinking game. You just have to have im-a-gin-A-tion." Castle tried to throw a Spongebob type of impression into the word 'imagination', but of course, Beckett didn't get it. He decided to let that one slide. "Drink," he ordered again.

With another glare, she picked up her wine glass and took a small sip. Castle raised an eyebrow at her. "Wimpy, detective."

She ignored his comment. "Since I have to use a vowel, A."

She watched as he carefully put an A in the third spot of the five spaces he had designated for letters. "Ha!" she exclaimed. "I got one right. Now YOU have to drink!"

He picked up his wine glass and, eyeing her the whole time, took a long, dignified sip. "Touche',"

"E," she said immediately.

He very precisely picked up his pen and wrote an E into the second space on the left side of the A. Without missing a beat, he picked up his glass and took another long, dignified sip. She smiled smugly at him.

"R."

"Nope. Drink."

"Damn," she said, but took a drink anyway, this one a little more substantial than the last.

"S."

"Wrong again. Drink."

She went through all of the common letters that he had listed before, and didn't get one of them right. She went through another two vowels, also to no avail. Castle had to start getting creative with body parts for the hangman just to keep her going. Before long, Castle silently got up from the chair and refilled her glass. "Looks like you'll need it," he said dryly, which earned him a pithy look from her.

Refusing to give up, she started at the beginning of the alphabet. Well almost the beginning, since she had already guessed A. "B," she selected.

"Oooo, the lady gets one right," he remarked as he marked a B in the first spot. And he took a long drink. "Just so you know, I made that drink a long one, to kind of even things out a bit," he told her, smiling innocently.

Kate looked at the letters on the page. As the answer popped into her head, realization dawned on her face and she groaned. "Castle, that is pathetic! BEACH? Come on, you already told me we were going to a beach. You're a writer...that's the best you could come up with? This is supposed to be a hint, not a test to see if I remembered what you told me before. Of _course_ I'm not going to guess something you already told me. Just for that...you drink. Drain your glass. Now."

He complied without protest as she mumbled something. "What was that?" he asked. "I didn't catch it."

"Seals." she spat back at him. "Okay? I thought it was SEALS, as in Seaworld. That's in Florida, you know."

"Yes, but Seaworld is in Orlando, in the middle of the state. Not by a beach. And you just said that I already told you that we were going to a beach. So why would you guess that?"

She rolled her eyes because, well, he did have a point. "Shut up, Castle, and give me another word."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Castle's next word was SUN, which was tougher for Kate than she would have guessed, but she ordered Castle to take another long drink because, as she pointed out, it really isn't a specific hint to the location. Then there was GULF, which gave her a moment of pause because of the second use in a row of the uncommon U. Seeing as how she wasted a lot of letters (and drank a lot of wine) trying to get that word, she told Castle he had to drink too because if there wasn't a hangman law against using two words in a row where the only vowel was a U, then there should be.

So he drank, even though he got her to concede that GULF was a good clue. It made her stop and think, because she'd gotten so caught up in the game of guessing letters that she didn't even stop to think about what the clue meant. "A ha!" she exclaimed. "I've got it!"

Castle leaned forward in his chair. "Yes, Detective?" he asked in a low voice.

She was feeling a bit giddy from the wine, so Beckett leaned forward in her chair to meet his gaze. "Pen-sa-co-la," she stated, enunciating each syllable clearly, matching Castle's low voice, and adding a seductive tone. "The beach is nice, from what I hear-there's sun, it's on the gulf, and best of all, there are lots of hot," she paused slightly, for effect, "tanned,"-pausing again, this time licking her lips-"muscled Air Force guys lurking around there. I hear they run on the beach for exercise, with no shirts on. Oooo..." she trailed off with a dreamy look on her face, as she saw Castle's eyes get a little darker and his lips get a little tighter.

"Definitely NOT Pensacola."

She sat up suddenly and said very cheerily then "OK. Next word." Castle wrinkled his nose at her and parroted her cheery "Next word" in a sing-songy voice. Her abrupt change in demeanor let him know she was messing with him, as she did so well.

Ten minutes (and several drinks for each of them) later, she exclaimed "MOLLUSK? You have _got_ to be kidding me! What the hell kind of a word is mollush...mull...moll-usk?" She looked puzzled at her inability to pronounce the word the second time without going slowly.

"It's a perfectly acceptable word, and it's actually a great clue to where we're going. And even though, yes, it has a U in it, it still has another vowel. And it has two Ls and an S, and those are even common letters. I just can't believe you guessed K last. It IS the first letter of your name, after all," he chided.

"Oh, shuddup, Castle." And she drained her glass.

Just then, a voice came over the intercom. "Mr. Castle? We have clearance to land, so we should be on the ground in about 15 minutes. I called ahead and your transportation is waiting. Could you take your seats, please?"

Rick reached over to a panel on the wall and pressed a button. "Thanks, Ted. Will do. Give me about a minute to put some things away."

He went over to the bar area with the wine and brought it back to where he and Kate had been sitting. He poured a small amount in her glass, and then in his.

She looked at the wine swirling in her glass. "Wow, I've never known a bottle of wine to last so long. That must have been a bigggggg bottle."

Rick, amused at a tipsy, but very relaxed, Beckett, cleared it up for her, "That's because it didn't. When you were trying to figure out 'GULF', I opened another bottle. Guess you were so intent on the word that you didn't hear the cork pop."

"Castle, you mean to tell me that we polished off two bottles of wine during this flight?"

"Yup. Well, I think most of it was you, courtesy of your bad letter guesses. You certainly can't blame me for that."

"Wowwwwww..." she happily dragged out the word. "That stuff went down smooth. You know how to pick 'em, Castle. You better not make me drive. 'Cuz I don' think I should. You know...drive. A car. Are we taking a car? Not now. After we land, I mean?"

"Don't worry, Beckett. You won't have to drive. Just leave it all to me." And with that, he patted her hand before sitting down and fastening his seatbelt. He held out his glass to her, and she took the cue to clink her glass with his as the pilot glided the plane in for a gentle landing.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

When the door opened, Kate was assaulted with the warm, tropical air of southern Florida. She didn't want to admit it, but man did it feel nice! Castle appeared behind her and handed her a pair of sunglasses. "Here, you're going to need these." She popped the glasses on and looked around at palm trees and a beautiful blue cloudless sky.

She turned to face Rick. "OK, Castle, we've landed. Now where the hell am I?"

"Guess." he said, but quickly changed his mind when he saw her glare and she took a menacing step toward him. "Fort Myers. But that's not our final destination."

She made a 'come on' gesture with her arms and prompted him, "And WHERE, might I ask, exactly IS our final destination?"

He got a smug smile on his face. "Captiva, my dear." He grabbed her arm to stroll down the steps to the plane (as much for effect as to make sure that he could keep her steady on the stairs after all of the wine she drank). "Come on," he said and, gesturing toward the stretch limo with his free hand, added "Your chariot awaits."

_**

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**_

That's it for this chapter. Hope you enjoyed the hangman drinking game...I didn't come up with that until I started typing this chapter, and then it kind of wrote itself. It's weird how that happens, but I'm lovin' it!

_**I promised the big reveal and now you all know where he's taking (took?) her. And even though you know know where they are now, please don't stop reading! I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve for the next chapters. **_

_**Please review! As always, I LOVE to read them!**_


	8. Chapter 8

_**I hope people are still liking the story, because I'm still having a good time writing it. After I posted it, I realized I loved chapter 7 (if I'm allowed to say that because, after all, I wrote it). It was fun to write. I hope I'm still keeping everyone interested in the story.**_

_**On to Chapter 8...**_

* * *

After all of the luggage, one pleasantly buzzed writer and one very tipsy police detective got safely stowed in the limo, they were off. Kate insisted on having all of the windows open, so the back of the limo got warm very quickly. Rick almost fell out of his seat when, as they were barely away from the airport, Kate started unbuttoning her blouse, announcing that this weather was just too hot for what she was wearing. However, on about her third button, she saw the look on Rick's face and laughed.

"Don't you wishhhh, Castle. Put your eyes back in your head." Although still very tipsy, she still knew what she was doing when she unbuttoned a few more buttons, tantalizingly slow, knowing he was staring right at the buttons that were coming apart to reveal...a cami top that she was wearing under her blouse. She whipped off the blouse and threw it on the seat next to her, and, still perfectly decent, gave him a cocky smile. "I dress in layers, and now I'm taking one off. But more importantly, I still have one ON."

"You're such a tease, Beckett," Rick told her, and then stuck his tongue out at her for fun.

After admiring the palm trees lining the roadway as the limo meandered on, they remarked on all of the ways this was so different from New York. Beckett, in her inebriated state, wasn't too original with her responses ("there aren't any New York license plates", which earned an 'uh-HUH from Castle as he tried to hide his grin). Before they knew it, they were pulling into what looked like a small shopping center with fountains and palm tree lined walkways between the stores. Kate noticed them slowing down, and looked at Rick. "Castle, I hate to tell you, but this duzzin look like no beach."

"No, it's not. I've been told that there's a very nice store here that sells beachwear. Lanie-bless that woman-told me that unless we were going to a nude beach, I'd better make a stop to get you something decent to wear while you're down here. Although I wouldn't mind indecent..." She swatted his arm, "Anyway, she said something to the effect of your wardrobe for anything but work clothes and high heels was seriously pathetic and in need of a rich sugar-daddy to take you shopping. And, poof," he snapped his fingers, "here I am, your rich sugar-daddy, and a ruggedly handsome one, if I do say so myself." He waggled his eyebrows at her before opening the door and all but dragging her out of the limo. "Come on."

She would have protested, but number one, she knew the extent of her wardrobe (even in her befuddled state), and Lanie was right, and number two, in her state, she couldn't really formulate a valid reason not to go with him, much less string two cohesive thoughts together. So she let him lead her into the store that the limo driver had discreetly pointed out to him.

She walked into the store to find a myriad of colors and styles, ranging from swimming suits and cover-ups to casual, but beautiful, tropical wear. Even shoes. Castle immediately walked over to some brightly colored sundresses in jewel tones. "Here...try one of these on. Pick your size. I can so see you in this. She did as she was told, and he took that as an invitation to lead her around to other racks, until she waved him off and told him to leave her alone. "Go play with your iPhone or something."

He got a pouting look on his face. "Fine, but only if you promise to keep trying stuff on. I don't want to see you in the same old ratty stuff the whole time we're here." At her raised eyebrows, he quickly clarified, "LANIE said most of your summery-beachy stuff was really 'ratty and nasty'" -he did the air quotes around the words for emphasis-"so it's on her orders that you need some new things. And don't forget the swimming suits. Plural. Preferably two piece." He leaned in closer to her. "Skimpy," he added suggestively.

The last comment earned him another swat on the arm before she grabbed his ear and led him to the door. "Ousside. Now. And don't come back for at least twenty minutes."

She turned back around to find the two clerks watching her with mixed expressions of shock and amusement. "Let's get this show on the road," Kate told them, and then went over to the racks and started gathering clothes.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Thirty minutes later, they were on the road again, with two bags plus one hanging garment bag of various items stowed in the trunk. Everything was bagged and ready to go when Castle came back into the store, much to his chagrin...he wanted to peek. Especially to see if there was a skimpy bikini anywhere in there.

They followed the signs marked 'Beaches' and after about another twenty minutes, they were crossing the causeway that connected Sanibel and Captiva islands to the mainland. "Now...where are we goin' again?" Beckett asked, after taking a sip from the bottle of water Castle had handed to her.

"Captiva Island. We're crossing the causeway now, and then we'll be on Sanibel Island. Captiva is on the other side of Sanibel. There's an old legend that says that a pirate once buried his treasure somewhere on Sanibel Island, and kept his female prisoners in prison on Captiva. He held them captive for ransom, hence the name."

"Ah, now I get it, Castle. You kidnap me and then you take me to Captiva to hold me captive. Ha ha...that's funny." she said drolly.

"Nah. The legend is kind of cool, and there's a lot of other history with these islands too. But there aren't any prisons anymore...just a lot of really nice beaches. And sunshine. And peace and quiet." Then his mood turned serious. "But, Kate, please remember that I said you could leave any time you want, and I meant that. I'm thrilled that you came along-I can't tell you how thrilled I am-and I just want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for giving me a chance to do this for you. But this is for you, so if you're ever not feeling like you want to stay, just say the word and we're out of here. It's whatever you want."

She was a little unnerved by the serious tone of his words and his attitude. _He_ was thanking _her_? When he had just chartered a private jet and spent an obscene amount of money on new clothes for her without even batting an eyelash? It was very unlike Castle to be really serious about anything except for his daughter, and it worried her when she saw him like that. Especially when it was directed at her. And it was...unsettling. She thought a short response would be the best. "Thanks, Castle." she said softly, touching his arm briefly and giving him a small smile before turning to look at the scenery once more.

She noticed a lot of small, quaint shops and restaurants, but no larger stores or even very much in the way of fast food. The main road was just a two-laner. In fact, it seemed that everying was very...primitive looking. She was surprised. She thought Castle would go for the glitz.

They came to a little curve with a cute looking general store, and right past there was a bridge. As they crossed the bridge, Rick told her that they were crossing onto Captiva. She watched as they traveled on, very slowly, though, as the speed limit was only 25 or 30, and saw countless beautiful houses. "It's funny," she remarked to Rick, "this all looks so residential. I don't think I've seen a hotel since we crossed the causeway. Where are all of the hotels?"

"The big resorts are on the extreme north end of the island. There's even a golf course." Rick finished just as the limo turned left onto a beautiful brick driveway set between stone pillars.

Kate was looking around at the lush landscaping as the limo driver came to a stop, got out and walked back to open their door. "Castle, what's this? Why are we stopping here? Do you know someone here? If you want to see someone, that's fine, but can we make it short and just get to the hotel? I'd really like to change clothes, maybe take a shower first." she said as she climbed out of the limo after Rick.

Rick smiled, clearly enjoying this because she really had no idea. "Kate, there is no hotel, for us anyway. Turn around and take a look. This is your home for the next two weeks. Or however long you want to stay," he amended quickly.

Kate turned around to look at the house, two stories of beachfront elegance, a covered, wraparound porch outlining the top floor, with comfortable looking patio furniture scattered around, offering a myriad of places to sit and enjoy the scenery, or curl up with a good book. It was huge! There were more windows than walls in some places, and she could see through all of the windows in the main floor to what looked like a pool at the rear of the house, and the beach beyond that. It was a mansion! It was a freaking mansion! Her jaw dropped as she realized what he had said about staying there.

"Holy shit, Castle! We're staying HERE?" she exclaimed as she turned to him, mouth agape.

* * *

_**That's the end of Chapter 8. I hope it was enjoyable even though it was kind of short and it didn't contain a hangman drinking game. ;-) So is everyone still with me, or is it getting boring/are you losing interest?**_

_**You know the drill, please review!**_


	9. Chapter 9

_**I just can't stop writing this story! Thanks for the great reviews, again and again! I really, sincerely appreciate them. Just when I think that the chapter that I post isn't so great, I see all of your wonderful reviews and just want to come back and write more!**_

_**Since I haven't actually admitted to anyone that I'm actually writing FF, even my family, they're all wondering what the heck I'm doing, chained to my laptop and just happily typing away. So far, it's a "project". But it's a fun one.**_

_**I hope you all enjoy this next chapter!**_

* * *

Rick was thoroughly enjoying Kate's reaction to the house. And she KNEW that he was enjoying her reaction, and it irritated her. Typically, she tried to appear unaffected by his wealth and fame and the privileges they could bring, the connections he had, the ability to get things done. She just did NOT want to give him the satisfaction of thinking that she was like any other little bimbette that followed him around and hung on his every word, just because he was rich and famous. She'd never wanted him to follow her in the first place, and she'd always refused to be a Castle fan-girl, even when he'd started proving to be acutally _helpful _in her cases. She thought had done a pretty good job of it, too, over the past few years, despite poker games with the mayor and famous authors, or hoity-toity society parties. (Well, she had gotten a little starstruck at meeting Joe Torre, but he _was_ Joe Torre, after all, so she could forgive herself for that one).

But even though she knew that she was being watched, and he was enjoying her reaction, and she was irritated that he was enjoying her reaction, she just could NOT stop gawking. Maybe it was the residual effects of the wine. Maybe it was the warm weather. Or maybe it was the fact that this house was TOTALLY, OMG A-MA-ZING, and that she was going to stay in it for two weeks. Unless Castle drove her insane beforehand.

She and Castle walked into the house after he took care of tipping the limo driver and sending him on his way. Right inside the front door, she stepped into a foyer area done in beautiful tones of tan and cornflower blue. Baskets of seashells let visitors know immediately that this was a beach house. A skylight in the two story open area let in an abundance of natural light. The floorplan was very open, with a kitchen opening into a huge great room, with a lengthy counter/bar area separating the two spaces. Both of the rooms overlooked the pool and hot tub, with the beach beyond, through several floor to ceiling windows. Several of the windows were open, gently ruffling some of the sheer curtains as the balmy early evening air wafted in. To the left of the kitchen, across the hall, was a screened-in porch with comfortable-looking rattan furniture, as well as a large dining table and chairs. Also to the left was one of the three (three!) stairways to the second floor of the house, two on the inside and one on the outside.

Finally, after walking around for several minutes just taking everything in, she turned back to Castle, who still held a small look of amusement on his face at her shock over the house. "OK, Castle, spill. Where did you find this house? Is it yours too? You've never mentioned it before."

"No, it's not mine, but I've been here before, once with Alexis and once just for a couple of free nights on a book tour. It's something, isn't it? It's owned by a company that's loosely related to my publisher. When I found out it was your birthday, I called my contacts to see if the house was free, and we got lucky. There's a service that stocks the place with food, so we should be set, at least for a while."

"Sounds like you've thought of everything. I suppose you've ordered beautiful weather too?"

"Would you expect anything less from me?" he answered smugly.

"Castle, I'm never really sure what to expect from you. The events of today confirm that. I...Oh, my gosh. Wow." Kate looked past Rick, and then walked over to the doors leading onto the deck by the pool, opening them so she could walk outside. After walking out, she circled the pool and came to stand at the railing. Staring out at the ocean, she looked out over the waves rolling in and crashing against the shore, and the glorious sunset that reflected its vivid colors onto the waves. Amazing. And she was here to witness it. She leaned forward on the railing and just stood, watching as the sun dipped lower and lower on the horizon.

After several minutes, she felt two hands on her shoulders, and a voice leaned in close from the back and whispered in her ear, "Happy Birthday, Kate."

She touched one of her hands very lightly to his, and whispered back "Not quite my birthday yet, but thanks, Castle. A lot. The whole trip would be worth it just to see this...it's indescribable." And they stood that way, not really touching except for his hands on her shoulders, until the sun dipped farther behind the horizon and all that remained was a reddish glow in the night sky.

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"Castle, I'll never tell and you can't make me."

Kate sat in a seat at the counter, Castle standing across from her in the kitchen, stirring some alfredo sauce on the stove. They each had a quick shower in their respective bathrooms upstairs before meeting back downstairs to make something for a late dinner, because once they thought about it, they realized they were both starving. He had let her have the well-appointed master bedroom/bathroom, once again saying it was because it was her birthday. Actually, she couldn't even call it a bedroom...it was a suite. It was easily as big as a decent apartment in New York. There was a cushy king-size bed, with enough pillows on top of it that she thought she could probably hide if she burrowed herself in between them. Toward the corner of the room, there was a separate sitting area, complete with a TV, in front of glass doors that opened onto the wraparound deck outside. The bath area was like nothing she'd ever seen before. Much to her eternal embarrassment, she had to call Castle in and ask him how to work the high-tech steam shower. He took great delight in pointing out every feature (OMG...an overhead rainfall shower? With music?), and of course he didn't neglect to point out the dual seats and shower heads-three times-complete with waggling eyebrows. Once he finally left-and she made sure the door was locked-she tried out each of the features (except for the duality of the shower) and stayed in it so long that she thought he was going to look like a prune when she finally did get out.

Now, both of them had reconvened downstairs, Castle having started dinner while she was still enjoying the steam bath. He'd opened a bag of pretzels to munch on, and she popped one into her mouth ravenously. She hadn't realized how hungry she was! She grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator; she'd had plenty of alcohol today with all of the wine on the plane. After she sat down again, they spent some time going back and forth verbally, the latest topic being the letters that she read on the plane. He asked what they said, resulting in her unwavering refusal to tell him.

"Come on, Beckett!" he whined. "I brought you down here, I even gave YOU the steam shower. I didn't even peek at the letters before you saw them! Don't I get a little reward?"

Kate pretended to think about it, and then got a suggestive smile on her face as she leaned forward across the counter a bit. "Oh, I suppose I can think of some little ol' reward..." she purred as she crooked a finger at him, indicating that he should come closer. He leaned in, and when there were mere inches between their faces, her hand came up and she shoved a pretzel in his mouth. "There. That should take care of it," she said laughingly, leaning back in her chair again as he uncermoniously chomped on the pretzel, with a grin of his own trying to sneak out.

"You're a wicked woman, Detective."

"Hey, I fed you. Quit your complaining, Castle. You know, those pretzels are actually really good."

"Don't eat too many...our next course is just about done." With that, he started getting out plates and preparing the counter area so they could eat. With the opulence of the house, she was glad that they weren't going to eat at the formal dining table. Casual was better.

After they ate and straightened up the kitchen, Rick took her around and showed her the rest of the house and the grounds area. He cautioned her about the no-see-ums, the little, seemingly invisible bugs that you seem to never really know about until you're itching from little bites. "They aren't bad at the beach, but if you go for a walk anywhere else, or if we go to the nature preserve, definitely remember the bug spray. I don't know how you could keep up your image of a calm, cool and calculating police detective if you're scratching at bug bites."

He pointed out the short path to the beach, amidst some tall beach grasses. "I checked the tidal chart and it looks like low tide will be around 8:30 tomorrow morning."

Not understanding what he was getting at, Kate looked at him quizzically. "OK...so...?"

"Just trust me...this is a very cool place around low tide. If you're not awake and down on the beach by then, expect a wake up call. Now, if you'd like me to stay with you to ensure that you'll be awake by then, just say the word." He winked at her with the last line.

She leveled a glare on him, ignoring the wink. "You just never give up, do you? 8:30? I'll definitely be up by then, don't worry. I'll set the alarm on my phone. Which reminds me...I should text Lanie to let her know that we're here."

She went inside and grabbed her phone, to find that she had a text already waiting for her from Lanie, probably from when she was taking that glorious shower. It was simple: "You there yet? Dish."

Kate quickly texted her back. "Here. Beautiful weather. Amazing house. Castle still alive...for now."

She looked at the time on her phone and saw it was getting late. Not terribly late, but she realized she was feeling the excitement of the day catching up with her. She looked at Rick and announced "Even though this is still pretty early for me, I've had kind of an active day, so I'm going to turn in." She held up a hand. "Yes, alone, before you ask."

Castle smiled at her preemptively anticipating what he was going to say and shooting him down before he even had a chance. It was SO Beckett. "Sleep well, Detective. Until tomorrow..."

"Night, Castle." And she turned and went to her room. As she crawled under the blankets, she reflected briefly over the strange and almost unreal events of the day. She even sat up and looked around again, just to convince herself, the yes, all of that really DID happen. WOW. And as she thought about everything that had happened, the cocky grin of a ruggedly handsome writer kept popping into her mind, as he played hangman with her, as he tried to sneak peeks at the clothes she bought, or as he munched on the pretzel she'd shoved in his mouth. Shaking her head, she drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

_**

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**_

I hope everyone liked the latest installment.

_**Going forward, I have two weeks of Castle/Beckett vacation adventures to come up with, and while I have a few really good ideas (that I think you all will LOVE), I'm open to suggestions. If anyone has any ideas of what you'd like to see them do, please send them my way. **_

_**And, like always, please review...I love reading your comments (especially the good ones)! ;-)**_


	10. Chapter 10

_**Thank you, once again, to everyone who is reading and following this story. I'm still getting new story alerts, and I'm just so incredibly tickled and touched that you like the story. I'm still relatively new at writing FF, so your comments and the other alerts I get are just wonderful for me to see (and are kind of motivational to make me want to write more)! **_

_**Here's chapter 10, hot off the press. A little drama, a little fluff and some good (I hope) innuendo. Enjoy!**_

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Kate's phone chimed at 8:00 the next morning. She turned over, disoriented, wondering how she got transported to some cocoon of 100% cotton fluff. She looked over and saw the trio of framed drawings of seashells on the wall, before the faint sound of rustling waves breaking against the shore permeated her emerging consciousness. Slowly, as she glanced around the room more, she remembered the events-the very unbelievable events-of the previous day. And normally, she wouldn't even stop to consider that it had NOT been a dream, except she was very obviously not in her own bed, or even anywhere near the cold and blustery New York winter.

So yes, everything yesterday really _did_ happen. She _was_ kidnapped on a private jet, given a shopping spree (somehow that just doesn't seem to go with being kidnapped) and brought to a mansion on a tropical island. By CASTLE!

She knew he was one for larger than life, grandiose plans, but this really took the cake.

Getting up, she surveyed herself in the mirror and deemed her hair acceptable enough for Castle's proposed beach excursion. Then she went over to the closet where she had hung her clothes, as well as those Castle had bought her yesterday. Ugh. She hated thinking of it that way...Castle bought her clothes. It made her sound like a concubine, a kept woman, some rich man's little play toy. And that was so NOT her.

Looking in the closet all of the new clothes next to the measly contents of her suitcase, she was somewhat stunned. Did they really buy all of this just yesterday? She was still feeling the effects of the wine quite a bit when they hit that store, so she vaguely remembered going on autopilot...trying on things here and there and approximating sizes on the other things that she could pretty safely not try on. But this much? How in the world did she buy this much? WHY in the world did she buy this much. And why in the world did she need four-FOUR!-swimsuits anyway? Grabbing a black one piece, she stripped out of her nightshirt and put it on. Castle did say beach, after all, so she figured that meant suit. Now, for something to go over it...she looked at the beach coverups that could double as very casual dresses. As she pulled one of them over her head, she casually glanced at the still-attached price tag and her eyes just about popped out of her head and she almost started hyperventilating at the price. Oh, my goodness! She let him pay _that much_ for just this thing? If just that one little dress cost that much, then how much did the whole lot of it cost? She almost felt ill thinking about it. The dress was gorgeous, but at that price, it should be stitched with gold thread or something. How could he just blindly pay for that? For her? In her mortification, she closed her eyes and yelled "CASTLE!"

Rick was walking by her room on his way downstairs when he heard her muffled shout. He threw open the door and ran in, worried by her yelling his name. Was she hurt? What could be wrong to make her yell like that? Seeing her just inside the closet, he ran over to her and grabbed her upper arms. "Kate! What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

The concern on his face would have been touching if she didn't already feel so...weird about him paying as much as he did for clothing for her. She grabbed at the price tag still attached to the garment. "Castle, do you SEE how much this cost? This one thing? That little shopping trip yesterday...my God, how much did all of it cost? Forget that, I don't want to know. And you paid for it without batting an eyelash! This is all too much!"

Rick was confused, which showed in his face. "I don't care how much it cost. Why do you? And didn't you see the price when you bought it yesterday? Why are you having a...a...a tizzy about it now?"

Kate glared at him. "I am NOT having a tizzy. I do not have tizzies, Castle. I am simply expressing my astonishment at what you spent. And no, I did not see the price, because you just started telling me to pick things out, and then I had to get you out of the store so you weren't hovering but I had to have everything picked out before you got back so you didn't start going through everything again, and, well..." she took a deep breath and continued by mumbling softly, "I was blitzed from the wine and I didn't look at the prices."

"What?"

"Ugh! I was BLITZED from the WINE and I didn't look at the PRICES! OKAY?" she all but shouted at him, through clenched teeth. Simmering down a bit, she went on, "I knew it probably cost a lot, but I didn't think about it then, and I didn't think was anywhere near this much anyway! This is not ME...I don't have people buying me thousands of dollars worth of new clothes 'just because'. Or jetting me off to somewhere tropical. I am NOT a groupie to some rich playboy!" She stormed out of the closet and over to the sitting area, where she plopped down on the couch with her face in her hands. "Maybe I should just go home after all," she mumbled to herself.

At her last words, Rick thought his heart would stop. No, no no! She couldn't go home now! He had to convince her to stay, somehow.

He slowly followed her and sat down next to her on the couch. "Kate," he began in what he hoped was a soothing voice. It was the same voice he used to calm his mother down when she was being melodramatic about something, so he hoped it would work now, on Kate. "I realize that it's a lot of money. But I make a lot of money. A LOT of money. An outrageously, ridiculously _obscene_ amount of money. You know that." He paused and shifted into serious-Castle mode. "And much of that money, lately, is because of you. If you hadn't arrested me all of those years ago, Nikki Heat would never have been born. And I've followed you since then, and you've let me, and you've put up with me. You've been my inspiration not only for this character for the fictional book, but also for how to be a better person for real." He looked away thoughtfully. "Granted, that hasn't always worked." She gave him a look as if to say 'no duh' and he refocused. "Anyway, the way I see it, you've earned it. So even though I know it's totally against what you are used to, please, just accept the clothes, accept...this," he gestured around to the house and the beach, "and don't obsess about the cost. I could have had my publishers arrange some sort of...I don't know...payment for 'creative muse services rendered', but I knew you would absolutely never accept that. So really, don't worry about it. And don't leave. Stay. Enjoy." She saw the shift back to regular-Castle. "Wear the clothes, because I'm sure they aren't really Alexis' style and to think of my mother wearing them, especially any swimsuits you may have bought...well, that's just scary." He looked off in the distance and shuddered, as if imagining his mother in a bikini. "So please don't subject me to that. She abuses my credit card a lot more than this as it is, and if I followed her around like I do with you, she'd just load me up with shopping bags like a pack mule. I'll try to be on my best behavior. And if I'm not, well, I know you can set me straight." He was quiet for a few moments. "Please, Kate, this is the least I could do for you. It means so much more to me to do this for you than the value of the money."

He had her again, just like he had with his letters. Rick sat holding his breath, waiting for her to say something. Finally, she looked sideways at Rick. "Got a scissors?" she asked.

He looked at her curiously, wondering at the seemingly abrupt change of topic. "Why?"

"Because you'll have to cut the tags off of all of this stuff because if I do it, I'm going to peek, and then I'm going to add it up, and if I do that then I know I'm gonna feel like shooting something. Or someONE," she looked pointedly at him, "but I don't have my gun."

"I'll find a scissors, never fear. And I'll take care of the clothes. But later. Because right now, the beach awaits." He stood up and held out his arm. She gave him a pointed look and stood up, before giving him a playful punch in his arm and striding out of the room.

He rubbed his arm. "Ow."

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After they went downstairs and had the requisite caffeine infusion through a few cups of coffee each, Castle led them out onto the beach. "Watch where you step," he cautioned, "some of the shells can hurt if you step on them wrong."

After she made it down the stairs and got a good look a the beach, Kate stopped and stared in amazement. Littering the sand were hundreds-thousands-of tiny seashells! The previous conversation forgotten, along with the mood that the conversation had induced in her, Kate hurried over to the line of tiny shells that indicated how high the tide had been. She picked through them with her fingers and smiled up at Rick. "Oh, my goodness, Castle! I've never seen so many shells before! This is so cool! I mean, generally if you see shells on a beach _at all_, you're lucky...it's nothing like...this. They're everywhere! Look at these!"

He knelt down beside her. "For some reason-the tides or the more east-west placement of the islands or something-this place is great for shelling. It's known for that. A lot of the little ones get broken easily, but every once in a while you'll find a really nice one." He walked around for a minute or two, stepping down to pick up unusually colored shells occasionally, sometimes discarding them if they were broken. He walked over to her and gave her his small collection of shells. "Low tide is the best time to find shells; that's why I was insistent that we come out here now. There are some bags and some other shelling equipment in the house in one of the closets. I'm going to go get it. I'll be right back. Look around and see what you can find."

Absentmindedly, she looked at him. "There's _equipment_ for finding seashells?" He smiled and started toward the house. Before he left, he stopped to take off his t-shirt and throw it carelessly on the chaise lounge. Kate couldn't help but watch him appreciatively. Nice shoulders, great abs. Castle had been hiding _that_ all this time? If she had to look at him for the next two weeks, it wouldn't be a bad thing at all. No, not a bad thing at all.

Now alone for a bit, Kate looked around, not really knowing where to begin. The shells were _everywhere_! Most of them were little scallop-type shells, but even so, there were still so many different colors, some were speckled and some were solid, and some were tiny and some were a little bigger.

There were so many! She noticed that the constant motion of the waves was washing other shells up on the shore, and then down again as the waves receded. She left the piles of shells behind, and went toward the waves. Belatedly, she realized she was still wearing the beach coverup, and went back up the shore to take it off and leave it on the same chaise lounge, sitting under a brightly colored beach umbrella, where Castle had left his t-shirt. She walked back down the shore and gently walked into the waves, testing the water. The water, luckily, wasn't as cold as she was bracing herself for...she was still getting used to being in a warm climate.

She decided to leave the shell-seeking for when Castle got back with the shelling equipment-whatever in the world that was-and she waded down a little farther in the water. Despite the waves, the water was pretty calm. And balmy. Stepping on something hard, she bent down to pick up a seashell and look at it. Oh, broken. Darn. She threw it back in the water. Apparently they all don't wash up on shore, she thought; as she waded deeper, she felt quite a few shells under her feet. She adjusted her hair tie so she had a messy ponytail on top of her head, to keep her hair out of the water. When she got deep enough she pushed off and glided a little bit, loving the feeling of floating in the gently rolling waves. The shoreline had such a gradual slope to deeper water that she actually went out pretty far and was still only in chest deep water. When she turned back toward shore, she was surprised to see how far she was out, and thought that she'd better swim back in. Castle was probably going to be back soon anyway.

As she got into shallower water, she decided to walk down the beach to look at the myriad of shells resting in the sand. It was soothing, having the waves wash up on her ankles as she scanned the shore. Lost in thought and the rhythmic sound of the waves rolling into the shore, she lost track of how far she walked.

She was amazed at the lack of people out on the beach. Any beach she had ever been to was at worst, swarming with people, and at best, had several sunbathers or families with children building sandcastles so that any illusion of privacy was quickly squashed. But this beach...she couldn't see anyone...no matter how hard she looked, there was just nobody around.

Rick came back with the shelling nets and bags and looked around briefly at the beach and the water beyond. Nobody. Where did Beckett go? As he was looking around, he saw her beach coverup thing on the beach chair. Oh, no...she did go for a swim! My God, she didn't get swept out to sea, did she? Quickly, he looked around again, and noticing a leggy girl down the beach, he dropped the equipment and ran to her, intending to ask her if she'd seen Beckett. However when he got closer, the leggy girl turned to look at him with a smile on her face, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

His lips tried to form the word, but at first no sound would emerge. "Beckett?" he finally managed to spit out.

One part of his mind registered that this was _his_ Beckett, _his_ hard-nosed detective. But the other part just saw her, smile on her face, standing in the sunlight of a new morning, wearing a black, one piece, plunge-neck swimsuit with golden beading at the keyhole neckline. Her figure was showcased by the suit; the beading and shirring highlighted her bust, and the fabric clung to her trim waist. The legs...they went on and on. She wasn't some anonymous leggy girl after all. She was _Beckett._ In a black one-piece, knockout of a swimsuit. Holy hell. That was _Beckett! _And she was _smokin' hot! _But man, that was _Beckett?_

"Castle, you're gawking. Did some of those little bugs that you were telling me about crawl up your shorts?"

"No, uh, I...that...you're...oh, man. You're just not...hell." He had never seen Beckett in a swimsuit before, not even close. But they were at the beach now, for heaven's sake. He knew she was wearing a suit under that coverup thing. Why was he so stunned now?

"I'm not hell? I certainly hope not."

Not hell, but she was hot. "No...you're well. You're very well. I'm well. Everything is well. It's all...really well. So...let's go...shelling. Yeah, let's collect shells." He was happy to get some of his coherent thoughts back again after they went AWOL for the last few minutes.

She gave him a strange look as she walked back towards him. "Okaaayyy" she said, eyeing him curiously because of his unusual stammering. Still, he just stared at her, as if in a trance. She knew he'd never seen her in a swimsuit before, but really...this wasn't even a two-piece. He was being ridiculous. Finally she'd had enough of the weird Castle. She reached up and, lightly but firmly, slapped his cheek. "Geez, Castle," she ordered, "snap out of it already! Or I'm gonna arrest you for excessive use of pronouns and non-completion of sentences."

He blinked twice, but then tried to explain himself (still without much success), "Oh, sorry. I just...you...oh, forget it." Then he turned and walked back with her to where he had dropped the shelling nets and bags, and tried to regain some of his mental faculties after being subjected to the Beckett bathing suit bombshell. If a one-piece had this effect on him, he was never going to be able to survive a two piece. Never.

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After applying sunscreen (fine-mist spray, nothing that needed to be applied by hand, thank goodness), they were back hunting for seashells. Castle had, for the most part, regained his conversational and trivia abilities enough to speak somewhat intelligently again. He showed her how to move her feet around in the sandy bottom to see if she could feel larger shells that might be buried a bit, and he demonstrated to her how to use the hard plastic net/sieve device to scoop up them up from the bottom. He told her that while low tide is the best time to find shells, some days are just better than others. You just have to keep trying, keep looking in different places.

"It's a lot like a murder investigation, I guess...if you don't find the answer in one place, just go somewhere else and keep digging." He was kind of proud of himself...developing an analogy equating murders with finding seashells. He smiled at the zany correlation, and she looked at him and shook her head, but gave him a little grin too.

They found some nice treasures and put them in their shell bags. They chatted companionably at times, while at other times were silent. Kate was relieved that he was able to finally carry on a decent conversation; he was, after all, the only other human being that she had any direct contact with right now, so it was nice that he could actually _talk_ to her-intelligently-again.

They were wading in knee-deep water, scanning the bottom when suddenly Kate sprinted forward through the water, splashing excitedly. "Castle, look!" He hurried after her, but he had no time to really see what she was after, before she bent down and started pulling at something under the water. "It's a really...uh...huge shell," she grunted as she struggled to pull up the almost foot-long conch, since it was stuck partially in the sand. Finally, she pulled it free, and held it up triumphantly. But just as Rick began to caution her "Watch out in case there's a live...", she turned the beautiful shell around to see the other side. And she screamed in shock and surprise when she saw the live animal still living inside the shell, which she did NOT expect. As she screamed, she tossed it away from her and jumped backward. But just as she jumped, a larger-sized wave broke right on her, knocking her off balance. She tumbled into Rick, who instinctively reached out and caught her.

And only then did she realize that she was now pressed body-to-body with a famous playboy millionaire, the two of them wearing nothing but a swimsuit and board shorts. And it was not an unpleasant experience at all. Not at all.

And only then he did he realize that he had a very wet, oiled up Kate Beckett in his arms, pressed tightly against his torso so that he could feel every exquisite curve, wearing nothing but one very smokin' hot black swimsuit. Heaven help him.

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_**So what did you all think? **_

_**(added 11/12: I forgot to put this in when I originally posted, but as you all can probably guess by now, I've been to Sanibel/Captiva a couple of times, once just a few weeks ago. The first time I went, I found a live animal in a beautiful shell, and although I didn't scream or throw it down OR land in the arms of a dashing playboy millionaire (darn!), it did shock me quite a bit to find the gooey-looking animal inside. This last time, I DID find an almost foot-long conch laying animal-side down in about knee-deep water at low tide. But this time, I knew that with the difficulty I had in pulling it out of the sand, there was likely an animal in it that had burrowed it into the sand, so I wasn't freaked out at all...I just thought it was cool that I found such a huge one, even though I couldn't keep it. However, as I walked around, showing it to people, I did get quite a few reactions of "ugh! What's THAT?" So I could totally see that even though Beckett isn't one to scream or be freaked out normally, if you put her in a very different environment and introduce something weird and totally unexpected, it might elicit that reaction. Plus, it was a GREAT story prop to achieve (what I hope was) a nice ending to this chapter.**_

_**Oh, to get an idea of the swimsuit that Beckett was wearing, I actually searched for swimsuits online. If you google my description of the suit, one of the results will be from Shapefx in the Spiegel catalog. The model has one hand on her hip and one arm in the air. It's not terribly revealing, but I didn't want terribly revealing at this juncture. Remember she did get FOUR suits...)**_


	11. Chapter 11

_**Readers: thanks for all of the reviews on the last chapter! I thought (and hoped) you would all like Rick's reaction and the little scene with the shell-and the aftermath-at the end. Sorry I didn't post this chapter sooner; I had some difficulty in conveying what I wanted to convey about their thoughts related to that encounter. My eyes were starting to cross and I finally realized I had to sleep on it. **_

_**Anyway, here it is. Hope you enjoy it.**_

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Kate had caught herself with one hand on Rick's bicep and the other on his shoulder, whereas Rick had caught her with his hands spanning her slender waist, right above her hipbones. To anyone else, it would have looked like a lover's embrace in the gentle waves. But to both of them, it was alien territory, light years away from anything they knew.

They stood looking at each other for several moments, bodies still pressed intimately together. When Kate had finally looked up into Rick's face after she fell onto him (it seemed like minutes but was really only a second or two), she didn't see the cocky grin or the waggling eyebrows that she would have expected, but instead a look that she didn't recognize. He didn't smile. His face was frozen and expressionless. But she didn't really have time to think about it, because after seeing his face, only inches away from hers and close enough to feel his breath, and locking eyes with him for several more moments, she felt his hands, the hands that were wrapped snugly around her waist, as they gently but quickly pushed her away from his chest to stand her up on her own a foot away. Knowing what she knew about Rick Castle, that was NOT the physical reaction she expected at all.

Rick managed to find his voice. "Uh...there you go. Got your sea legs again?" Wow. Definitely not the verbal reaction she would have expected from him either.

They both let their arms drop from each others bodies, losing physical contact with each other, but their eyes still held, as one, and then two more waves crashed on them. The whole episode took less than a minute, but seemed like an hour.

As she regained awareness of her surroundings after her close encounter of the Castle kind, she remembered what had gotten them into that impromptu embrace in the first place. She looked back toward where she had tossed the large shell. "My God! What WAS that thing, anyway?"

Her question reminded him of what had happened. He chuckled as he bent down to retrieve the giant shell. "Why, Detective Beckett, you don't mean to tell me that you're scared of a harmless little _mollusk?"_ He emphasized the last word just a little bit, and gave her a quick, sly grin as he took a step forward and held out the shell with the slimy-looking creature inside. She forced herself to not take a step back, away from the odd-looking thing. But what he said triggered something in her memory.

"Mollusk?" she parroted.

"Mollusk." he confirmed, nodding soberly, but with a grin again threatening to sneak out.

And then in unison, they both said "The last hangman word!" As if to tell them that they were correct, the conch chose that time to shrink back into its shell, resulting in it emitting a spray of water at them, which erupted mainly in Kate's direction. Kate let out a little yelp and this time, couldn't hold back her little jump backwards. Rick was even surprised enough that he let out a little yelp too, although he didn't drop it. After looking at the shell, they looked back at each other and then dissolved in laughter.

"You're such a _girl_, Castle. You screamed!" she said in between her laughter.

"Hey, you screamed too! And not only that, he made you jump!"

"In case you haven't noticed, Castle, I _am_ a girl."

The thought immediately popped into Rick's head, although he didn't voice it. '_Oh, I noticed all right.' _Down, boy, he cautioned himself.

When they had regained their composure, she stepped forward again toward the shell that Rick was holding. She bent forward to look at it. "That is one strange looking thing."

"It's really a face only a mother could love." He pursed his lips and looked at the invertebrate. "Or maybe that's its body. I'm not really sure."

"How is it still...living? Don't they have to be deep in the ocean or something?"

"I've seen a few live ones...they do throw you for a loop the first time you pick one up. That's why I started to say something when you were pulling it out of the water. Especially with the way you had to pull the thing from the sand...I figured that it was a live one. I just didn't get my warning out soon enough so you weren't startled."

Unbidden, before she could even think about it, the thought_ 'thank goodness' _popped into her head, as she realized that she wouldn't have had a reason to be in Rick's arms if she hadn't been surprised by the shell. Then, just as quickly, _oh my goodness where did THAT thought come from_? She quickly tried to blank the thought from her mind by studying the mollusk once again, but was still quite acutely aware of the person who was holding it.

"Done with him, Beckett? I think he's probably had enough excitement for one day."

_WHAT? Why is he talking in the third person? Oh, the shell. He's talking about the shell. Yeah, right._

She scrambled to say something. "Uh, do you have a camera? Or your phone? I'd like to take a picture of him...or her...it. Lanie really needs to see...it."

"Sure, my phone is up on the chair. Let's go grab a picture."

He took several pictures of the conch, and even made her pose for one with the shell, but under duress. After, he walked farther out in the water and set the conch back down in the sandy bottom before walking back to her. "I'm sure he'll be much happier returned to the wild. Besides, he wouldn't make a very good pet." He pinched his nose and made an exaggerated face like he'd just smelled a skunk. "He'd really start to reek after a while." He looked around. "Hey, what do you say we get out of the sun for a while? We could go back to the house, have something to drink, maybe a bite to eat."

"Sure," she replied, and they started the short trek back to the house.

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In her room-scratch that-in her suite, 20 minutes later, Kate sat on the chair in the sitting area, wondering what in the living hell had just happened down on the beach. Sure, she got mildly surprised by the thing inside the shell. OK, fine, she was kind of freaked out there for a couple of seconds...but geez, she had never seen anything like that before and she _really_was not expecting it. And she lost her balance in the wave and ended up being pressed against the rather nice chest of Rick Castle. Who woulda thunk it? That was one thing, and it was an accident, after all. But then she _stayed there_, holding onto him, him holding her. And it was...nice. Surprisingly so. But HE was the one who had to separate them. Why didn't she jump away? Why wasn't _she _the one to pull away?

And what was with him, anyway? Mr. Casanova Playboy, after all of the innuendo over the years, after all of the looks, finally had her in a compromising position and what did he do? He looked at her like she was some...some repulsive, sleazy, overzealous bimbette who was TRYING to hang on him or something, like he just couldn't wait for her to get away from him. And then he DID push her away!

At least they managed to get past the uncomfortable moment. And, it seemed, it was forgotten soon after. Except for her lapse when he reminded her about being startled, and she flashed back to the stumble in the water. It was probably just the heat anyway, she reasoned. It was her first day and she wasn't used to the heat. She'd been in close proximity to Castle more times than she could count and she'd never lost her head like that before. What in the blazes was going on?

It had to be the heat.

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Rick was glad that Kate had gone up to her room for a bit. He couldn't believe he was actually glad for a moment alone, away from Kate, but he was. For most of the morning, he he'd been feeling out of sorts. To put it mildly. It had all started with Kate in a swimsuit. By swimsuit standards, it wasn't that revealing. But man, it was _Beckett_ in that suit! Hell, he invited her to the beach; what did he expect...that she'd stay wrapped in a coat the whole time? He was an idiot, and he was going to have to get a grip before he did something stupid to make her want to go home. He scrubbed his hands over his face. He just could not wrap his brain around his intense reaction to her this morning, and seeing a lot...more...of her than he had ever seen before. And then when she stumbled, he caught her and he had wrapped more than his brain around her. He'd looked at her face as she stared up at him, pressed against him, and he felt some things. Weird things. Feelings that should not be brought up in the same sentence as the name 'Kate Beckett'.

It it had been anyone else, that position would have been the beginning of a nice little romantic ocean interlude. But it wasn't anyone else-it was _Beckett_-and he had no business thinking of her like that. Sure, they always bounced around a lot of innuendo; flirty stuff. But that was just how they interacted, and he liked to mess with her. And she liked to give as good as she got. It was fun...it was _them._ And damn, he was afraid she'd shoot him or drown him or something for even _being _in that position, even though it was technically her fault, so as soon as he could manage it, he pushed her upright and away from him. Thank goodness he'd had the presence of mind to push her away before he did something really, really stupid.

God! What was WRONG with him? This was _Beckett_ he was thinking about. He really had to get a grip. A big one. And not on her!

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After Kate came back from her room, they ate a light Castle-style lunch: mac and cheese from a box (the favorite meal of 9 year olds everywhere). She saw what he had made, and shook her head and laughed. "Is your stomach trying to reconnect with its inner child?"

"Beckett, I will have you know that this cheesy goodness is timeless. You may scoff now, but your stomach will thank you later."

She sat down by the bowls he had dished up, and ate. And actually kind of enjoyed it. She couldn't remember the last time she had had mac and cheese, but it had been a while. And when he produced 'dessert' and suggested they take it down to the lounge chairs by the beach with some cool drinks, she said sure.

Later, sitting on the lounge chairs, munching on Oreos and watching the waves come in, Kate asked him about the lack of people on the beach. There was hardly anyone around, just a few people farther along the beach, so far down they could hardly see them. "I know, isn't it great?" He took another bite of an Oreo, and then started talking as he finished it, which had Kate rolling her eyes again. "Not really what you'd 'spect zough. Parking ish tough to find"-swallow (thank goodness, she thought)-"and expensive on these islands, and there aren't any public parking lots very near here. So to get to the beach here, people have to either have access to a house around here or have to walk along the beach for quite a long way. Plus, today is Saturday, and a lot of the vacation condos run Saturday to Saturday rentals, so it's generally a travel day and not a beach day, so the beaches are less crowded anyway." He popped the rest of the Oreo into his mouth and grinned at her.

After polishing off a row of the Oreo package (mostly from Rick) and resealing it, they sprayed each other with suntan lotion again, both secretly glad, once again, that it was a spray and not a cream that had to be applied by rubbing it into the skin. Although Rick did have to look away when she sprayed her chest. And her long legs. There were those non-Beckett types of thoughts again! Where were those coming from? Some synapses were definitely misfiring. If this kept up, he was going to have to see about having a lobotomy of the Beckett-centric portion of his brain.

Kate had suggested they take a walk along the beach to look at the houses and of course, look for shells. Rick grabbed one of the mesh shelling bags before they left. They walked forever, it seemed, talking about nothing in particular, finding shells here and there, dodging waves, and occasionally kicking some of the surf at each other. Rick was happy that Kate was finally cutting loose...she seemed to be having a good time. And that was the point of this trip. He'd meant what he told her about paying her back for everything, and he was supremely glad that she was accepting everything, and was letting herself have a good time.

When they returned to their beach chairs, Kate noticed that the water was quite a bit closer to the chairs than it had been. "I guess it's almost high tide. It's really come in a lot."

"Are you up for more fun in the sun? Because I have just the thing. Or we can go inside for a bit, or go up to the pool if you've had enough time down here." He was game for anything, as long as it kept her happy and relaxed. That was the goal.

"I think I've had enough sand for right now. Let's go up to the pool. I wouldn't mind doing a few laps. So tell me," she asked as she gathered her things, "what's on your agenda for tonight? We had mac and cheese for lunch...please don't tell me that you're going to feed me hot dogs for dinner, Castle."

"Not hot dogs, I promise, although we do have to have a hot dog on the beach at some point. It's a requirement of a beach vacation. You can't go home unless you've checked 'yes' on the 'hot dog by the beach' question on the island exit questionnaire." That earned an 'oh, brother' type of look from Kate. He just went on as if he were totally serious. "But I still have to show you one thing about the house that I didn't show you last night. It will truly knock your socks off. It knocked my socks off and I'm not even sure I was wearing any when I saw it the first time. It's truly an experience. But I'll save that for after dinner."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Castle, you're worrying me."

He just smiled mysteriously at her in response and leaned closer to her and spoke slowly, in a low voice. "Got you wondering, don't I?" He straightened up and picked up some of their items. "Should we go get our exercise in? Or rather you can swim while I watch. I've never been much of a lap swimmer. Too boring. I have more of an urge to do cannonballs and handstands."

"Castle, please don't tell me that you're going to watch while I do laps. That's almost as creepy as watching me do paperwork at the office.

"Don't you love it how there are just some things you can always count on, no matter where you are?" he said cheekily, and she was left with the strange impression that there was more than one meaning to his words, although she couldn't figure out what it might be.

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Not as much of a cliffhanger as the last chapter, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

_**As always, reviews are always greatly appreciated! Also, they're very useful to me to know if I'm on the right track. Please review!**_

_**Author's background note: in the third to the last paragraph where he says "Got you wondering, don't I?", imagine him using the same tone of voice as he does in the scene that's in the opening credits where he says "Do I look like a killer to you?" That's the voice I was imagining when I wrote it.**_


	12. Chapter 12

_**Two chapters in one day! Hope you like this one.**_

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Kate was drawn to the steam shower again, and, like last night, couldn't resist taking an extra long shower and trying out all the features of the unit. Man, she loved this thing. This was going to be hard to give up when it was time to go home.

Afterward, she looked in the closet at her new wardrobe, and settled on a casual outfit of white capri pants and a bright pink scoop-neck t-shirt. She left her hair down and dried it into light waves that fluffed around her shoulders. She noticed that she had gotten some color from the sun today, but luckily she didn't appear to have a sunburn anywhere. She was glad that she hadn't gotten a sunburn; that would not be a fun thing to have happen on her first day.

She walked down the stairs to find Castle sitting on the wide chaise lounge part of the couch, typing fast and furiously on his laptop. His brow was furrowed like he was really concentrating and his hair was mussed as if he had been running his fingers through it. She stood there on the stairs for a moment, just watching him type, smiling as she realized that she was watching him work, much as he always watched her work. He was kind of cute when he was so intensely preoccupied like that. _Whoa, where did that come from?_ Wait a minute...no need to get worked up just because she admitted that she thought he was cute. He was a good looking guy, everyone knew that-even him, unfortunately. Although he did label himself as 'ruggedly handsome', not cute.

She moved quietly so as not to disturb him when he appeared to be on a roll with whatever he was writing. She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, grabbing a can of soda. The typing continued. Even the noisy pop and fizz of her opening the can didn't permeate into his consciousness. As she sat in the chair at the counter and sipped straight from the can, the darker side of her profession caused her to hatch a little plan to have a bit of fun with the writer boy.

She set her can down silently on the counter. She untied the long gauzy sash she had used as a belt. Winding it around her hands, she slowly snuck up close in back of Rick, but not directly in back of him, lest he see her reflection in the screen of his laptop. Surprise was crucial. Quick as a hummingbird, she reached over his head and pulled the sash around his neck, pulling it tight enough to make her point, but not tight enough to harm him.

She leaned in close to his ear and whispered breathily "You can get into all sorts of trouble when you don't pay attention to your surroundings, writer boy."

Without moving anything except his right hand, he pointed to the screen on his laptop. Following his finger with her eyes, she read the last couple of lines of what he had typed just moments before, to where he left off when she grabbed him:

_"I know Kate is moving behind me. She's watching me, like I always watch her. She's quiet, and she's good, but I would still know her anywhere becau"_

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. That stinker! But before she could do anything or say anything else, he started typing again:

_"And you, Detective, should know by now that you can get into all sorts of trouble when you underestimate your opponent."_

A split second too late, she thought later, she was just a split second too late, once she read that, to realize that she was in trouble. She simultaneously let go of the sash and made a move to jump back, but she wasn't quick enough to elude his grasp. He pushed his laptop to the cushion side of him, while reaching in back with his other hand to grab her arm. She was to the side of him, instead of directly behind him, so it actually made it easier for him to grab her. She tried to jerk free, but her feet slipped on the slippery floor beneath her and she had no leverage. While she shrieked in surprise, he grabbed her other arm and neatly flipped her over his shoulder and the back of the couch, so she was laying on her back in front of him, half on his lap and half on the cushion side of him. His right arm was touching the soft skin of her upper arm, and his left arm cradled her shoulders.

Smiling in triumph, he looked down at her and said "Gotcha!"

"Maybe this time, Ricky. But I am known for my long memory and my ability to exact revenge when you least expect it."

"I'll look forward to it." After he said that, the smiles left their faces as they both seemed to realize the position they were in. Their eyes locked for several seconds. His mouth opened, then closed. She swallowed. Of their own volition, their heads moved infinitesimally closer. Then, suddenly, without warning, Rick leaned back and helped boost Kate up so she wasn't laying across his lap anymore. "There you go. Hope I didn't hurt you when I flipped you over the back of the couch like that," he said apologetically. She sat up, now off of his lap, but turned around to look at him.

When she was laying on his lap (my goodness, she had been _laying_ on his _lap!_), she saw the look that he had had. Was it a look of wanting? Whatever it was, it was gone in a flash and he quickly sat her up with the apology. So she turned around to look at him again, and she saw the same serious look. He was being so weird! Where was the bantering, playful Castle from a minute ago? Once again, for the second time today, he had her in a compromising position, and he didn't throw out one crude joke, one innuendo, not one cocky grin...nothing! And then he pushed her away again! This was starting to piss her off. She was going to get to the bottom of this!

Close. Rick was losing the battle. She was still too close, and he was having those non-Beckett type of feelings again, like he wanted to cover her mouth with his and kiss her senseless. NO! This was _Beckett_, and he was not going to mess things up when they'd finally gotten everything out in the open and cleared the air, and she seemed like she was starting to trust him again. They didn't have that kind of a relationship. And he didn't want to lose his friendship, his working relationship with her by doing something stupid or trying to corner her into something else, just because they were alone and in close proximity together at this house.

If this kept up, he was going to have to schedule that lobotomy really soon.

_Ding...Dong...Ding...Dong._

They both looked toward the door as the doorbell rang. 'Saved by the bell!' Rick thought. He had never been more glad for a doorbell in all his life. He so needed to have a reason to get off that couch and away from her before he did something really stupid.

Just as Kate was going to ask him what was going on, the doorbell rang. She watched in amazement as it seemed he couldn't get away from her fast enough. He jumped up, hopped over the back of the couch and ran out of the room so fast that Kate was sure he would have won a gold medal if it had been an Olympic event.

How infuriating! Not only that Castle had pulled her onto his lap, not only that he had pushed her away _again_and all but sprinted away from her, but was she actually peeved because Castle had NOT made a move on her? If anyone had told her a week ago that Rick Castle couldn't seem to stand to be in close proximity to her, that she would actually be bothered by it, and was annoyed by the fact that his normal M.O. of crude humor and suggestive comments evaporated when they got within a foot of each other, she would probably have had the person committed to Bellevue.

God, she was pathetic.

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Rick strolled in a minute later with a huge pizza box and a smaller one on top of it. "Dinner is served!"

"Well, at least pizza is an improvement over hot dogs." she said dryly.

"You don't sound impressed. Prepare to have your mind changed. This," he gestured flamboyantly toward the box, "is the best chicken alfredo pizza you have ever tasted or will ever taste again. Prepare to have your taste buds titillated."

Later, after being forced to admit three or four times that yes, this was the best chicken alfredo pizza she had ever tasted, she walked around the great room. "So, Castle, what is this thing that's gonna knock my socks off? Should I go put some socks on so you can knock them off?"

"Ah! Yes! How could I forget? Please, Ms. Beckett, have a seat." He gestured grandly to the chaise lounge portion of the couch where he (and they) had been sitting before. She sat down and he sat down way on the other side of the couch, where the seats were just normal-not the chaise lounge type. He handed her an odd looking remote. After instructing her to press the top row of buttons, she could see how the buttons controlled the window blinds, and even the windows themselves, opening them or closing them.

"Yes, Castle, that's nice. The windows are pretty cool. I've seen remote-controlled blinds before, but never the actual windows."

"Now let's watch some TV," he said, obviously eager about something.

She looked around. "Okaaaayyy, but where do you want to go?" she asked him, indicating that there was no TV around that grouping of furniture.

"We're going to stay right here. Press the button marked 'TV' on the remote." he instructed, just about jumping out of his skin, while waiting for her to press the button.

She did as she was told, and watched in amazement as the large beach-scene painting on the wall in front of her came out several inches into the room, raised up, flipped over to reveal a large flat screen TV, and then sunk back into the wall. Her jaw dropped and she hit the button again and watched as the TV flipped back and the painting was once again displayed. Then she hit the button once again to get the TV back.

"Shut the flippin' front door! That is seriously cool."

"Told you it would knock your socks off. So anyway...what do you want to watch?"

They spent the rest of the evening flipping between a myriad of shows, mostly comedies, laughing at the humor. Kate stayed on the chaise lounge part of the couch, and except for when Rick went to get them something to drink, he stayed clear on the other side. And this did not go unnoticed by Kate. She realized with a start that she wanted the old Rick back. Sometime along the way, she had gotten used to him invading her personal space, and she missed it. And today at the beach and tonight on the couch, when he had _really _invaded her personal space, she found that-heaven help her-she actually kind of liked it. And she wanted to try it again. What was it about this place that was making her have these thoughts after only a day alone with him?

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow she was going to see about playing a game of space invaders, but not the video game kind. She was going to play the Rick Castle kind.

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Please leave me a review...I love to read them! (and I get disappointed when I don't see many...boo hoo) ;-)


	13. Chapter 13

_**Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to all of you wonderful people who read and reviewed Chapter 12! I SO appreciate it. I was shocked to find that it garnered the most reviews of any chapter so far! I stayed up way too late writing it and posting it, so to see the reviews the next morning and throughout the day was just fantastic! Especially looking at the number of reviews relative to the number of hits on that chapter, I'm so impressed and thankful to those of you who are following this story, and take the time to read it and review it. As your reward, this is my longest chapter yet (barely, but it is). I hope you enjoy it!**_

_**By the way, I think I know what you all want, and eventually we may get there (OK, we WILL get there), but I still have some adventures in mind for them for the rest of this vacation. What fun would it be to have all of the Caskett-y goodness done two days into the vacation?**_

_**And now, the next chapter in our adventure...**_

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Rick had messed with Kate enough over the years, so she was ready to do a little bit of messing of her own. But she was going to do it slowly, oh, so slowly. Plus, she was just tired of the way he was acting. The fun of their...friendship was the banter, the give and take, the innuendo...all of it. When he got weird and retreated, well, that took something away from the whole thing. She never thought she'd miss him being goofy and incorrigible, but she did! And if he kept that up for the whole vacation, she might just have to shoot him as soon as she got her gun back. So after he went to bed, she engineered a covert operation to the closet that housed all of the beach and pool supplies. She found exactly what she was looking for and then engineered some magic on the other items so her purpose would be served. Check.

Next, she surveyed her closet and chose her next prop. Smiling, she reasoned that the combination of the two items she had planned would keep Castle close to her-but quite on edge-for the first part of the day quite nicely.

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She was up and about well before Rick made an appearance from his room. She had showered again, making sure to liberally apply the cherry-scented body lotion that he had commented on a few times. She made a mental note to thank Lanie for packing it for her. Well, she amended in her mind, she would thank Lanie if she ever admitted to her what actually was going on here. She then changed into one of her 'props'. Castle bought it for her, after all, so to wear it would be the polite thing, after all. Of course, he had no idea what he had bought at the time, but somehow, when when all was said and done, she didn't think he'd complain too much.

She went downstairs to grab a cup of coffee. She set the coffee maker to make another pot, and then cut up some fruit to eat for breakfast. She grabbed her coffee and the fruit and took them out on the deck with a book that she took from the bookshelf. And she sat down to wait for her prey.

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Rick awoke to the wonderful smell of coffee brewing somewhere in the house. He looked at the clock and groaned. It was after 9:00. After the stressful evening of keeping his distance from Kate, he thought he would have no problem going to sleep, that he would welcome the solitude and not having to be on guard against his ever-present but suddenly-hard-to-deny pull toward Kate Beckett. Wrong. He tossed and turned for most of the night, thinking about Kate, thinking if the events of the day, the encounters when he could have finally taken the opportunities and progressed their relationship along. Or, as his mind kept coming back to, he could have taken the opportunities and damaged their fragile relationship beyond repair. Thoughts like that did not make for a peaceful night.

He stumbled downstairs in his boxers, and barely registered as he passed it that Kate's bedroom door was open and she wasn't inside. He found the coffee brewing and fumbled in the cupboard for a cup. After pouring it, he looked around. Hmmm...he wondered where she was. After the first few sips of liquid caffeine, he realized that he was standing in the kitchen in his boxers and nothing else. Not good. He grabbed his cup and went back upstairs to change into some swim trunks, and then came back down to refill his empty cup. He walked out on the deck to find the detective sitting in a chaise lounge in the shade under an umbrella, reading a book and sipping a cup of coffee of her own.

She looked up as he got closer. "Good morning, sleepyhead," she teased. "I'm glad you're finally here. I cut up some fruit for breakfast, but I wanted to wait for you. My stomach was starting to sound like it was staging a revolt." She took the cover off the container as he sat down in the lounge chair next to her, on the other side of the table.

"Good morning," he greeted back. He looked at the fruit. "Looks good." he said, for lack of anything better to say.

_And now it starts_, Kate thought.

"So," Kate began, "tell me what you have planned for today." She reached in the bowl and picked up a plump strawberry, and, while looking at him expectantly as if waiting for him to relay his plans, wrapped her lips (which she had already treated with shiny gloss) around the berry and took a slow, deliberate bite. "Ummm...juicy..." she said in commentary. The pupils of his unblinking eyes got just a little bit darker, and he didn't move.

As she chewed, she picked another strawberry out of the bowl and held it out to him. He was close enough to eat it out of her hand, had he been in the right mindset for the playfulness, but he wasn't and hadn't been since he had gotten all befuddled when he saw her in her swimsuit for the first time the day before. So he took the strawberry from her hand, popped it into his mouth himself and looked out onto the beach. As he was chewing it, he looked thoughtful. "More time at the beach? See if we can find some new shells? Oooo...I know!" He snapped his fingers and changed into a cartoony voice. "Maybe we can see if we can find Marvin the Mollusk and welcome him to a new day." He changed back to a normal Castle voice. "We could try boogie boarding too." He reached into the bowl himself for another berry.

'Could this get any easier?' Kate thought while trying to suppress a smile. But she still played it nonchalantly, nodding and agreeing with his suggestions, and then eating some of the fruit while they made small talk.

When their discussion slowed, she got up to take the bowl inside. "I'm just going to take this inside, grab the coffee pot and sunscreen. Be right back." He watched her disappear in a sashay of the the bright red gauzy material of her beach dress, and return a few moments later with the coffee pot and a bottle of sunscreen. She poured more coffee and paused to take a few sips, as he did the same. Then she put her cup down and started unfastening the front closures of the beach dress. She wasn't looking at him as she unfastened the last of the buttons, but she was totally aware of the moment that she pulled off the dress and set it over the back of her chair, revealing the second of her new swimsuits, a monokini. Technically it was a one piece suit, but from the back it looked like a bikini. The suit was again black, and had a bikini style top with a halter-type tie in a contrasting white and red fabric. There was fabric underneath the top that curved down in an hourglass shape toward the bottom, narrowing in to only be several inches wide over her navel, and then flaring back out to connect with the bottom of the suit by the decorative ties at her hips, leaving her sides totally bare. There was a contrasting black and red fabric that matched the halter tie, secured in a feminine bow at the bottom of the top between her breasts, and the narrow piece went around the back to fasten there also.

Rick erupted in a fit of coughing.

She went over by his chair and bent down by him, pounding him on the back. "Geez, Castle, you forget how to drink or something? See, first we take a sip, then we taste, then we swallow. Not breathe, swallow. Breathing comes before or after the swallowing, not during."

As she bent down next to him, he caught the scent of suntan lotion, and then her signature cherry scent. It made a strangely alluring mixture for his olfactory sense. And did absolutely nothing to distract him from the sight of her in another new swimsuit. If that's what it could be called. No, maybe torture would be a better name for that thing.

As his coughing fit eased, he dared another look at her. And that breathing thing that she was talking about just now...he found that it was really hard to do all of a sudden. She was standing there, wearing that element of eye torture, her hair pulled up into a messy bun, looking at him quizzically, like she looked at people they questioned when she was trying to figure out if they were holding something back. And, oh, yeah, he was holding something back. So he did the only thing that he could think of: retreat.

He jumped up and said "I have to go into the house for a minute...yeah...just...uh...hold down the fort for me, OK?"

_'You're not getting away that easy, buster,' _thought Kate slyly. Before he could get away, she grabbed his arm and handed him the bottle of suntan lotion. "I put lotion on before you came out, but I couldn't reach my back. I don't want to get burned. You're the only one here, so you get the honors." She pushed him down sideways on the chaise lounge and then sat in front of him.

He looked at the bottle of lotion in his hands. Lotion had to be applied. By hand. With his hands. On her body. Anytime over the first couple of years that he knew her, that would have been heaven on earth to him. Now, he was trying to be respectful-a new one for him-and not ruin the friendship, the partnership they had formed by being a playboy going after his latest conquest, which she had accused him of before. Man, it was tough to be noble.

All of a sudden, a thought occurred to him. "Hey, didn't we have spray sunscreen yesterday?"

Kate smiled to herself. This was where her advance planning came into play. She turned on her best acting abilities. "Well, I grabbed it, but I just got a little bit out before it ran out. Guess we used more than we thought yesterday. Luckily we had some lotion. Now will you put it on my back already?"

He was trapped. So he did the only thing he could, and he acquiesced. He squirted some in his hands, rubbed it around, took a deep breath, and touched her back. His strokes were tentative at first, until she said "Will you get on with it, Castle? At this rate, tomorrow's tide will be coming in before you finish. And get my whole back, OK?"

So before he knew it, he was living out what was previously a fantasy: rubbing, massaging lotion into Kate's body. As he was massaging it in, she even gave a few light moans, purring "Man, that feels good. I should hire you as my masseuse. Or masseur. Whatever."

Shortly after that, he dropped his hands and announced "There. I think I got everything."

But she surprised him by leaning back against his chest as she sighed contentedly. "After that, I may just need a nap now. Talk about relaxing. And look at that view." Rick knew what she meant, and he mumbled something in agreement, while he was really looking down at the woman leaning against him, not the beach beyond. And he put his hands on her upper arms and his chin on the top of her head and just allowed himself to sit for a couple of moments and enjoy the sounds of the waves and the birds with her. It wasn't quite an embrace, but it was enough for now, and it was a lot more than he had ever let himself think about lately.

Kate sat quietly against him, once again surprised by how much she enjoyed the feel of him. Her little plan of emptying all of the spray lotion out of the bottles last night, coupled with unveiling her new swimsuit, was a rousing success. She hadn't planned for this moment of an almost-embrace, but she was glad she had went with her impulses for a change. She had definitely gotten him back into her personal space, and she was coming to discover, more and more, that she expected him to be there and she missed it when he wasn't. And now, she realized that she liked it when he was there. Very there, like now.

She didn't want to get up, but she had made some headway with her stunt, and that was good enough for her. For now. So she slowly sat up, and then stood up. She reached a hand back to him and said "The beach awaits." He took her hand and let her pull him up, and they walked down the steps to the beach.

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They had a relaxing day at the beach, taking another long walk, this time in the other direction, and generally goofing around. They found some more nice shells, some with the creatures still in them, which, after seeing 'Marvin the Mollusk', as Castle had dubbed him, hardly bothered Kate at all. In fact, she and Rick had started a little game, yelling "Mollusk" whenever they found a shell with any sort of invertebrate living inside, much like the game when people see Volkswagon Beetle cars. Rick goofed once and yelled "Mollusk" before he fully saw that the inhabitant of the shell was really a small crab. After he corrected "Oh, Crab", Kate got some grief mileage from that by yelling loudly "What's wrong, Rick? Got Crabs?" He started running after her, chasing her into the surf where they both collapsed, saying that she was going to ruin his reputation by yelling that around the beach.

They came back to the house in the mid-afternoon, and after showering, Rick worked a little bit on his latest book after checking in with Alexis, and Kate curled up on some of the furniture on the outside balcony with the book that she had started that morning. After some time reading, she went to the back deck to watch the sunset, where Rick joined her. They didn't touch, but they did stand close to each other, watching the flaming reds and oranges. Finally, Kate spoke, something that had popped back into her mind from the night before and she realized that she had never asked.

"Rick?"

Although surprised at the use of his first name, he nonchalantly answered "Hmmm?"

"Last night, when I was sneaking up on you behind the couch, you were typing something but you hadn't finished by the time I grabbed you around the neck. You had typed that I was quiet and good, but you'd know me anywhere because...and that's all you got typed. Why would you know me anywhere? I've been wondering that."

Rick looked thoughtful, and then shrugged. "Well, your smell, for one thing. You had just showered so it was fresh. Whatever you use...it smells like you. The cherries. And...well, I just always somehow know when you're there. I don't know why. I sensed you were there, and then I could smell your scent, and I was right."

'_He always knows when I'm there?'_she thought. Wow...that was kind of...creepy. In a really endearing sort of way. But she tried to make light of it, and she had the perfect analogy, so perfect that she couldn't resist. "You sensed I was there? And you smelled me? Geez, you make yourself sound like a german shepherd. Maybe I should call you Fritz."

He pondered that for a moment. "OK, but then I get to call you Mitzi. Fritz and Mitzi. They rhyme. Sort of. It's catchy, don't you think?"

She rolled her eyes and swatted his arm. "No," she said bluntly. "Let's go eat." And she turned and walked into the house, Rick following obediently with a smile on his face.

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Rick found a missed call from his publisher that he had to take, so he flopped down in the corner of the lounge part of the couch. Kate began rummaging around in the refrigerator and cupboards. She could hear him talking softly about something, but she tuned him out as she prepared a tray of food. After she heard him finish, she took the tray out and set it on the part of the seat next to him, and then sat down herself so the tray was in the middle. She'd found some crackers, different cheeses, deli meats, and some of the fruit that was left from the morning. "I thought we could have a little picnic and see what was on TV. Lord knows this couch is big enough for us and everything else."

"Ah, Detective, you've prepared such a feast for me. And I must say that you have perfect timing. I looked at the TV listings earlier and you'll never guess what I found for us to watch! Voila!" he said, as he hit a button on the remote to turn the channel.

The look on his face was comical as the channel switched and they found themselves watching a commercial for an erectile disfunction product. Kate looked at him, trying not to smirk, and said "Geez, Castle, first the crabs, now this. Really, if you're having some sort of problem with your 'man parts', I _so_ do not want to know."

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, then opened it again when he made a face and said in a sing-songy voice, "You think you're so funny...ha ha ha. Just wait, it'll be on after this."

However, to his dismay, the next commercial was an ad hawking the latest in hair loss prevention for men, showing balding men with just a dusting of hair on the top of their heads. He grabbed his head as if to check to see that his own hair was still there, while Kate couldn't hold in her amusement anymore and collapsed on the back of the couch and howled with laughter. He was so blatantly vain sometimes that seeing his reaction to those two commercials was just priceless.

After one more commercial about urinary incontinence products that had Kate almost falling off the couch with her renewed laughter and had Castle storming off to the kitchen for something to drink, muttering about the universe being out to embarrass him, they finally got to the opening credits of the show the Rick had been waiting for. As Kate's laughter subsided, she watched the screen as the announcer announced that it was time for "Wheel...of...FORTUNE!"

She heard Rick shout "Aha! Finally!" behind her, just as a beer was handed to her. She looked back at him questioningly. "I needed a beer after that, to make me feel manly again. You get one too." He hopped over the back of the couch and continued to explain, "You said you never have time to watch Wheel of Fortune. Now's your chance."

They sat through the show, munching on the food on the tray and sipping their beers. Kate was surprised to find that the show was kind of fun. She and Rick took turns applauding or dissing the contestants for the letters they chose, and competed with each other to solve the puzzle first. Kate didn't understand the 'before-and-after', so Rick solved that one first.

"Time of My Life Lessons?" she asked incredulously after it was solved. "Give me a break. That doesn't even make sense."

"Sure it does. 'Time of My Life' and 'Life Lessons'. You have a word, and you have two phrases, where the last word of one phrase is the beginning word of the other phrase. Before and After. Easy."

"Shouldn't it be called 'Beginning and Ending' then? Or 'Ending and Beginning'?"

"Beckett, this is Wheel of Fortune. It's been around for longer than Alexis has been alive. It's a classic. Don't question it. Just go with it."

She rolled her eyes, and then moved the tray over to the table and sank back down next to him, still a foot away, but a little closer than she had been before. He was in the corner of the couch already, so he couldn't go any farther away, like he did last night, without getting up and moving somewhere else.

"Well, Castle, now I can cross 'Watch Wheel of Fortune' off my bucket list. Thank you so much." she said, batting her eyelashes at him in mock adoration. "So what's next?"

He rubbed his hands together excitedly. "It gets even better!" He turned the channel via the remote, and put a hand partially over his eyes as if he was afraid to look, remembering what happened the last time he changed the channel. He was relieved to find nothing more than an ad for cereal. "Whew," he said, and then announced "GSN, otherwise known as the Game Show Network!"

Beckett rolled her eyes again, and gave him an 'I can't believe you're making me watch this' type of look, but nonetheless settled in to watch the shows with him. Once again, she found they weren't as bad as she expected them to be, and part of the entertainment was watching Rick and his facial expressions as he tried to guess the different words. Eventually, though, she noticed that his responses were getting fewer and farther between and after one particularly long lull in responses, she looked over at him to find him leaning back, asleep in the corner of the couch.

He really was kind of cute when he was sleeping. As she looked at him, she realized that she was kind of tired too. Looking at him, she thought 'why not?' and she gently leaned against his left side. She dimmed the lights with the one remote, and set the sleep timer on the TV with the other. As he felt her weight against him, he shifted slightly and moved his left arm that had been on the back of the couch. She gently took it and pulled it around her, so his arm was stretched across her and his hand was resting on her right shoulder, effectively tucking her against him. She curled up both of her hands and held onto the arm encircling her. As she laid against his body, with his arm around her, she realized once again, as she drifted off to sleep herself, that she liked the feeling. She _really_ liked the feeling.

It looked like today's game of Space Invaders, Rick Castle style, was a rousing success.

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That's it for now. As always, please review, and thanks again for reading!


	14. Chapter 14

_**Thanks to everyone for making it this far, and for still being interested in the story. I'm going slowly (time-wise), but I hope it still continues to be interesting for everyone even though it doesn't move terribly fast. But that should be good because slow passing of time in the story = more chapters, right? ;-) And thanks so much for the awesome reviews for the last chapter!**_

_**Sorry this chapter took so long. I wanted give the next morning the right flavor of an emerging relationship without going too fast or too slow. I hope I did OK. **_

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Rick was having a really good dream. He could feel a warm body cuddled up on his left side. The soft body under his left arm was breathing evenly, and his left arm was encircling the person, her head resting on his chest. In his barely conscious state, he didn't really question it, but just briefly opened his eyes to survey the situation. It was dark outside. The lights were dimmed, the TV was off, and he was half sitting, half laying on a very soft, comfortable couch. And then he saw that the soft body that he was holding belonged to Kate Beckett. And in his barely conscious state, he didn't really question it or think about it; he just simply smiled and turned toward her a bit more as he tightened his left arm around her, and put his right around her too. And as he did that, she sighed and turned toward him in her sleep, and snuggled in closer.

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The early morning light began to filter through the blinds. Rick was waking up slowly, reluctant to leave the delicious dream he'd had of snoozing with Kate in his arms. As his brain was claimed by consciousness, he realized that he wasn't in his bed. And then, his eyes flew open as he realized that not only wasn't he in his bed, but Kate wasn't in her bed, and they were curled up on the couch...together!

How did that happen? The last thing he remembered was shouting words at the TV game shows. And then, of course, that delicious dream about sleeping with his arms wrapped around Kate. But, looking down at her again, he realized that it wasn't a dream at all.

He had slept with Kate Beckett! In a very platonic sort of way, just sleeping, but nonetheless, he had spent the night with her, arms wrapped around her. And she hadn't killed him. Wow. So much for his plan of keeping his distance.

He stayed that way for at least another five or ten minutes, with her laying on his chest, just enjoying the sensation of being cuddled with her. Then as the light got brighter in the room, he felt her begin to stir. There was no way he could get out of this without fully waking her up. So he enjoyed the last few moments of this unexpected bliss, and braced himself for the wrath of Kate Beckett when she woke up and saw where she was, and who she was with.

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Kate had never traditionally thought of herself as a good actress, but these last few days were proving her wrong. She actually woke up before Castle did, and spent her time staring out the window at the lightening sky as the sun rose. But she kept oh, so still, not wanting to wake him, just enjoying the newness of the feeling, of laying against him, being wrapped in his arms, the rhythmic feeling of his chest going up and down as he breathed in his slumber. And just like last night, she realized that she really liked the feeling. Her, cuddling with Castle, willingly, and liking it...who knew?

She could tell when he started to awaken, and she closed her eyes again to pretend like she was still asleep. She kept her breathing even. She knew the moment that he realized that he wasn't alone...he gave a subtle little jerk and she could feel his head lifting just a bit before laying back down. And she also knew the moment he was fully awake and he realized where he was, and with whom. He tightened his arms around her just a bit more. It was subtle; it wouldn't have woken her up if she had still been asleep, but she could feel it since she was awake. And it gave her kind of a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach to know that, for a change, he wasn't trying to push her away as he had done for the last couple of days, but was just trying to hold her closer.

She stayed perfectly still for a while, and so did Rick. As they laid there, she was somewhat puzzled as to why, after she knew he was awake for a while, he didn't pull away like he had been doing for the past couple of days. But she wasn't going to question it, she was just going to enjoy it while she could.

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Kate stirred and shifted. She lifted one hand to her eyes and rubbed it over them. Then she opened her eyes. She turned her head slowly toward Rick's face. He held his breath, thinking that these were the last few sane and peaceful seconds that he had before the world was going to explode, when Kate Beckett realized that she was snuggled up with him.

Their eyes met, and then to his utter astonishment, she gave him a little smile and said sleepily "Morning." Then she put her head back down on his chest and continued "You actually make kind of a nice pillow, Castle."

He let out the breath he had been holding. "Uh, thanks," he managed. He was still worried that she wasn't fully awake, that she didn't fully realize yet where she was. And that all hell would break loose when she did.

But she just laid there, with him, her only movement being the lines she had begun to trace on his arm with her fingertips. Who knew that such a gentle touch could set his nerve endings on fire like that? Of course, it probably had at least a little something to do with the person who was orchestrating that gentle touch.

After several more minutes of just relaxing as they were, Rick finally got up enough nerve to ask her.

"Uh...Kate?"

"Mmmm...yeah?"

"Uh...I just have a question to ask." He paused a moment while he thought about what to say. For once, he couldn't come up with a clever way to phrase the question, so he merely asked "Uh...what are you doing?"

"I guess I'm relaxing because I don't feel like getting up quite yet. Isn't it obvious?" She continued to brush her fingertips along his arm.

"Sure, I suppose. I guess I was just wondering if I should prepare to take cover at any minute. Are you sure you're not plotting to hurt me or kill me and dispose of my body somewhere?"

She was thoughtful for a moment, but when she continued, it was in the same relaxed, somewhat sleepy voice. "Well, the thought has crossed my mind from time to time. Sometimes it's actually been a daydream of mine, based upon how annoying you've been at any given time. But now, I can say that I haven't been plotting to hurt, maim or kill you, right now or at least any time within the past several days. That said, I can't guarantee the future. So, tell me, Castle, why do you think I would be plotting your demise?"

She seemed so relaxed and 'with it' when she was talking that he wondered what was going on. She obviously wasn't talking in her sleep. Yet she made no move to get away from him. This wasn't the Beckett that he knew. He didn't get it. He tried to figure out a way to muddle his way through a response to her question without making either one of them more uncomfortable than they already were. Or rather, since she seemed pretty comfortable, he didn't want to make this situation any more uncomfortable for himself. Or make her decide that she really should maim or kill him, after all.

"Well...uh...I'm here, and you're there, and your 'there' is almost the same as my 'here'...well, really your 'there' _is _pretty much right on my 'here'... Oh, crap! That sounds bad and kind of kinky, and for once I don't mean it that way, but anyway, usually my 'here' and your 'there' don't even come close to each other, not like this anyway...not that I'm complaining, mind you...so I'm just kind of wondering what's really going on here. Or there. Or wherever. And if I should be worried for my safety here. Or there."

He could almost feel her rolling her eyes as he fumbled through his very un-eloquent explanation. She turned her head to glance up and him, and asked rhetorically, "Are you sure you're a writer?" Then she settled back down and said simply, "I'm comfortable. And you do make a good pillow, you know. Okay?"

"Yeah. It's fine." They both went back to being silent, enjoying the early morning, listening to the faint sounds of the waves crashing outside.

After several minutes, Rick broke the silence. "Kate?"

"What now, Castle?"

"This is really nice, and it's comfortable, and I'm really glad that you're not going to kill me. And I'd probably normally just end up falling asleep again..."

"What, Castle?" she urged, in a 'get on with it' tone.

"I'd love to do this again sometime, but right now...I _really_ have to pee." And with that, he gently sat her up, but then jumped up and bolted to the bathroom, as Kate shook her head as she laughed.

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Later, after showering, Kate came down to grab something for breakfast. Castle must be cooking; something smelled really good. She took a seat at the breakfast bar, and when Rick saw her he exclaimed "Oh, good! You're here." He changed into a french accent and became very dramatic. "Ze breakfast for mademoiselle," he said as he put a plate down in front of her with a dramatic flair. "Ees served." She looked at the plate and smiled. On the plate before her was a beautifully made omelet, adorned with one pink birthday candle sticking out of the top.

Then, so fast that Kate feared that he had some sort of multiple personality disorder, his demeanor switched from the flamboyant french chef to a rock star. He started throwing his head around and strumming an air guitar. After his brief solo, he grabbed the spatula to use as a pseudo microphone, and started dancing around the kitchen and singing 'They say it's your birthday!', ending with another rendition of the head throwing and the air guitar. At the end of the performance, he executed a bow. When he stood up, he was rubbing his neck and said, "I think the air guitar did a number on me."

Throughout the whole thing, Kate had been watching him with interest. Re-emergence of the man-child, she thought. But at the same time, she realized, while unorthodox and kind of...weird, it was kind of fun. Still weird, but fun. She had certainly never been given a birthday omelet and then serenaded by a bad rock star wannabe. She picked up her fork and said "Thanks, Castle. That was...a very new experience for me, and definitely an interesting way to start my birthday. Although it did have some scary overtones," she finished as she picked up her fork to take a bite of the omelet.

"Wait!" Rick exclaimed suddenly. "You can't eat it yet! You haven't blown out the candle and made a wish. Allow me," he said, striking a match and lighting the candle.

Kate stared at the flickering flame against the yellow background of the omelet. Trying to match his drama, she closed her eyes for a moment before opening them, pursing her lips and blowing out the candle. Then she looked at him as if to say 'can I eat now?'.

But instead of answering her unspoken question, he asked excitedly "And what did you wish for, Detective?"

She narrowed her eyes and looked at him seductively as she leaned forward a bit in her chair. "Wouldn't you love to know?"

Her heated look was interrupted by a crackle and fizzle on the counter below her, as the candle flame, the one that she thought she had blown out, sprang back to life. She looked up at Castle, who was trying to hide his amusement but wasn't succeeding very well. She glanced back down to the candle, blew it out again, and then looked back at him. "A trick candle? You loser!" she said, laughing, while she picked up the candle and jokingly threw it at him.

But then they both watched in morbid astonishment as the candle got caught in the fold of his t-shirt, and once again flickered to life, starting his t-shirt smoldering. Later, as she remembered it, it seemed to unfold in a surreal sort of slow-motion. Rick started to jump around the kitchen like a madman, pulling the front of his t-shirt in and out like a bellows, while yelling a chorus of "Ah!" and "Oh!" in a very girlishly high voice (which Beckett made a mental note to remind him of later). His antics snapped Kate into action, and she very calmly but quickly walked around the counter and over to the sink, grabbed the sprayer part of the faucet, turned it on full blast and aimed it at his chest with perfect precision, as if she was unloading her clip full blast into the chest of a deranged psychopath. For good measure, and well, just because it was fun, she altered her aim a little bit and sprayed him full in the face for a quick second and had some brief enjoyment of his shocked sputtering.

After she aimed the water stream at the candle on the floor, just in case it didn't get put out by the dripping Castle, she turned off the water. She put the faucet away, swiped her hands together several times as if to say "My work here is done," stepped around the puddle of water on the floor, and went back to sit down to eat her rapidly cooling omelet. Castle was still standing in the middle of the floor, holding his drenched and now charred t-shirt away from his body, looking shell-shocked. Then as Kate wordlessly sat down and began eating, he opened a drawer to find several towels and threw them down on the floor to soak up the excess water from the impromptu fire extinguisher.

Kate surveyed the whole thing out of the corner of her eye, never commenting. She pretended to be immersed in eating her omelet, so she wasn't really expecting it when he came around behind her and, without warning, hugged her tightly from the back, trapping her arms with his, and pressing his still-dripping wet t-shirt tightly onto her back, effectively drenching her clothes too. She could feel the cold water seep through her thin shirt and she let out a little shriek from the shock. He put his lips close to her ear and, letting her know the intent of the hug was devious, said sarcastically "I wanted to give you a little hug, Detective, for saving my life from the blazing inferno that was my t-shirt. Although since you caused said blazing inferno anyway, I also wanted you to feel the effects of your fire prevention efforts. Smokey the Bear would be proud of your quick thinking."

And he quickly let her go and scurried up the stairs to his room. _'Damn,' _she thought, feeling the air conditioning on her now-wet back, _'now I have to change too.'_

This was certainly starting out to be a very memorable birthday.

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Stay tuned for more Castle and Beckett birthday goodness!

_**As always, reviews are greatly appreciated and brighten my day (especially the good ones!) Thank you all SO MUCH for reading!**_


	15. Chapter 15

_**Sorry it's taken me a couple of days to write this. I had a bunch of ideas that I was tossing around, and then I had to do some tweaking once I actually got the words out. I'm shocked that this story has now gone over the 100 mark with subscribers who are following it...I NEVER expected that when I started writing it. Never. I am truly amazed! So a great big thank you to all of you for following it. **_

_**Like the earlier chapter where they talked about the Hamptons debacle, this chapter has a slightly different, more serious feel than the previous few. I truly hope it's OK and that it still keeps your interest. I tried to throw in some more funny evil-Kate stuff toward the end, so I hope you enjoy that.**_

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Rick had yelled into Kate's room as she changed, and after asking her if she needed help changing (of course he _had_to offer...it was the polite thing to do), told her to dress casually and coolly, but not for the beach. She assured him that she had been dressing herself for well over two decades and could manage without his help, and proceeded to pick out one of her older pairs of shorts that Lanie had packed for her and one of the new cami tops that was bought on that mega shopping trip right after she arrived. The shorts fit her like a second skin, and the top was a little crocheted number, demurely sexy without being overly revealing.

She left her room to find out what Castle had in store for her. She found him sitting on the porch, looking impatient but fiddling with his iPhone. When he looked up and saw her, he looked her up and down appreciatively. "Now I'm really glad that you had to change your clothes," he murmured.

She looked at him, looking a little different than he normally did, with the newly grown beard stubble decorating his face, mirrored sunglasses on, and wearing a baseball cap backwards. He was also wearing kind of a gaudy Hawaiian shirt. "Is this your vacation look, Castle?"

"We're going out, so I'm trying for something of a departure from my normal look, in terms of a disguise. I don't really want your birthday usurped by overzealous Derek Storm or Nikki Heat fans, so if I can look a little more frumpy and touristy, all the better."

Kate was touched by his foresight, that he tried to take some measures to keep her birthday uninterrupted by his fans. Then she had another thought. "We're going out? Like, somewhere else? How? We were dropped off here by the limo. My God, you didn't call that limo back again, did you? That's not terribly inconspicuous, you know."

"Come with me," he instructed, putting his hand on her back to guide her down the stairs to the brick driveway. Parked in the front of the house was a Mustang convertible. "I could have arranged for something a little more flashier and foreign, but once you do that, the anonymity just goes down the toilet. But we do still get the fun of a convertible."

Kate looked at him sideways. "I suppose you want to drive, don't you." It wasn't so much of a question as a resigned statement.

"The lady gets it right in one guess! It's your birthday...what kind of a Big Beckett Birthday Bonanza host would I be if I made you do something that you do at work every day?" At the look on her face, he got an appropriately contrite look on his own face and said "Oops, it just kind of slipped out again, didn't it?"

She crossed her arms and nodded at him with raised eyebrows. "I thought I made myself clear about the alliterations, Castle." She turned and got into the car, reluctantly in the passenger seat.

Rick followed suit and got into the driver's side of the shiny car. After fastening his seatbelt, he turned to her. "Uh, Kate?"

She looked up in the air at the glorious blue sky. "Why is that I often have a pang of worry stab at me whenever I hear you say 'Uh, Kate'? She turned to look at him. "What, Castle?"

"That. The 'Castle' business. For today, while we're out, and if we go out again, just try to call me 'Rick,' OK? I'm trying to be incognito, at least a little bit, but what do you think is going to attract more attention: you calling some scruffy, but still ruggedly handsome, dude 'Rick', or you calling the same dude 'Castle'? I mean, 'Rick' is a somewhat common name, but 'Castle' might cause some people to turn their heads to take a second look, and the next thing you know, you have screaming tourists trying to get an autograph. And with the camera phones, and Youtube , and the media..." he trailed off.

He did have a point. "OK, you win. _Rick_."

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Ninety minutes later, as they rode a tandem bike around the bike paths of Sanibel Island, she knew why he'd asked her that. She'd lost count of the number of times that she'd wanted to scream "Castle!" at him, which would, as he pointed out, undoubtably attract a lot of attention. Not that the way he was driving the tandem bike was the essence of subtlety either. She feared that they would be forever banished from the bike paths of Sanibel. Not that that would be a bad thing for mankind for _him_ to be banished, but she didn't want to be labeled unfairly because of his ineptitude and utter lack of grace on two wheels.

"_Rick,_ you're not supposed to weave all over the path like that."

"_Rick,_ that was a crosswalk, you're supposed to yield to pedestrians, not yell at them to stay back because you can't stop."

"_Rick_, you have to keep pedaling in order to make the bike go. It's MY birthday, remember? How is it fair to make ME do all of the pedaling?"

At the last comment, he turned around to look at her. Bad move. Very bad move, because he turned around right before a slight curve in the path, so when the path curved, he simply kept going straight because he was looking back at her. And they ran right off the path, and Kate screamed "RICK!" right before they ran into a tree.

Luckily, because of Rick's lack of pedaling and Kate's quick response and last minute application of the brakes when she saw where they were headed, they weren't traveling very fast when they hit. Still, even while the impact wasn't enough to damage the rented bike, it was just enough to send Rick sliding forward off the seat, the lower half of his body hitting the frame of the bike in a very tender area. He hopped off the bike and kind of sank to the ground, taking deep breaths.

Kate got off the bike and managed to prop it up on the kickstands so it wouldn't fall over. She then walked over to Rick to see how he was. She knelt down by him and put a hand on his shoulder. "You OK?" she asked.

He put his one hand over her hand. "Getting there." Deep breath. "Although my rugged manliness has suffered a cruel blow."

She rolled her eyes. "Poor baby. But I think if anyone could recover, it would be you. Your rugged manliness will live to be manly and rugged another day."

"Thanks for not saying anything."

"You're welcome. I think you got enough of a lesson from the bike, anyway. But I do have to say one thing. Can we both please agree that _I_ will be the one to drive the bike from now on?"

He gave her the wounded puppy dog look (which probably wasn't that much of an act because of what had just happened), but nonetheless nodded reluctantly.

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After they made it around the rest of the bike paths, actually quite uneventfully because Kate was driving, they returned the bikes to the rental place and Rick took her back to Captiva to a little British-style pub on the beach. The atmosphere was fun, and they had a leisurely lunch sitting at a little table on the patio, just people watching and beach watching. Toward the end of their meal, Rick kept glancing at his watch, so Kate knew something was up. Finally, she said "OK, _Rick,_ what's next? I know you have something else planned. I just hope this won't be as dangerous and potentially life-threatening as that bike ride was. At least while you were driving."

"Why do you always say my name like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like _'Rick',_" he said, affecting sort of a breathy quality with a lot of emphasis on the one syllable.

"Do not."

"Do too. Well, maybe not exactly like that, but you do say it weird."

"Gee thanks!" she said in mock outrage. "Now you don't like the way I say your name? At least I'm not calling you C-" she stopped and looked around a bit, before lowering her voice and continuing "your last name."

"True, and you've done a pretty good job of that-"

"Hey, I think I've done a damn _fine_ job so far!"

"I'm not disagreeing. I haven't heard one Ca...uh...last name cross your lips since we left the house. But it just seems like it's so difficult to say my first name, and you put some sort of...I don't know...emphasis on it whenever you say it. Why? It's actually a pretty easy name to say, one syllable, four letters but only three sounds because two of the letters work together. Even easier than the last-name-we-shall-not-say."

Kate had to stop and think for a moment. Once again, he was right, darn it. She hated it when he had a valid point. Not about the amount of letters in his first name, but the fact that she put some...emphasis, or something, on his name whenever she said it.

"It's weird," she said simply.

"My name is weird?"

"No, _saying_ it is weird."

"So, _saying_ it is weird, but what..._thinking_ it is somehow not on the weird scale? What about whispering it? Or writing it?"

"No," she tried to explain, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she tried to find the right words. Somehow, this conversation had undertaken a serious tone all of a sudden. "The name isn't weird and saying isn't weird by itself. It's just that I'm talking to YOU. And you've always been Ca...I've always used your last name. Just like I do with Ryan and Esposito. I work with you, that's all."

"You work with Lanie and you call her 'Lanie'."

"I...she's my friend too, so of course I call her by her first name." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back. Because by saying that Lanie was her friend, she was implying that Rick was not. This was not going well, and she was really digging herself a nice, big, deep hole.

He was silent for a moment before he asked quietly, "Am I _not_ your friend?" As he asked the question, his face registered a look of hurt. Not the playful, wounded-puppy-dog look of hurt that he used when he was teasing her, but genuine hurt, like what had crossed his face after he'd come back to the precinct after the summer and everyone gave him the cold shoulder. Yet despite the fact that she could see that she hurt him, he reached over the small table to clasp her hand tenderly. She looked down at their joined hands, and then the low, serious tone of his voice caused her to look back into his face. "I consider you my friend, Kate. In a lot of ways, I consider you my best friend."

The sincerity of his words shocked her, humbled her. He had brought her here, to this paradise, had really been wonderful to her, in a Castle sort of way, and she was acting like this. Over his name. How stupid.

So she turned her hand up to grasp his in return. "C...Rick, I'm sorry, of course you're my friend. I'm being stupid because honestly, I've never really thought about it before in those terms. If someone ever asked me who you were, I'd say a writer or my partner or maybe even some bumbling klutz. But most everything that we've done together, most all of the interactions we've had have been work related. Even with dinners out, we'd talk about cases. Sure, there was other stuff thrown in there, but there was always work. So I guess I never thought about it in a different way, in a non-work type of context. But we're here, and there's everything _except_ for work, so...man, I am so screwing this up." She took a breath. "Castle...oh, crap...Rick, you're my friend. I told you once I'm just no good at saying what I feel. I guess you can see that pretty clearly right now, huh?" She gave a nervous laugh. "Of course you're my friend. You're probably a lot more than a friend to me. I'm really just not...what?" She stopped because of the quizzical, but somewhat shocked look on his face.

"You said I'm probably 'a lot more than a friend' to you. Define 'more than a friend'?"

Oh, shit, Kate thought, had she really said that? She knew what it sounded like, but what _did_ she really mean? She fumbled for an answer. "I...don't know. I guess you're a good friend, a really good friend. I'm just starting to realize that a conscious level, I guess. I mean, look what you've done for me with this...this whole...trip thing. And everything. That's...wow. How do you describe it with words? Well, _you_ could, I'm sure. But I mean, it's amazing. And I really am having a good time." She squeezed the hand that was still holding hers. "And despite the fact that you got me here under duress, kind of, I really am having a good time. Except for the Marvin, the mollusk the size of Manhattan. So thank you. Really, sincerely, thank you," she finished softly.

At her words, he lost some of the hurt look that was on his face, even though she kind of evaded answering the question too deeply. There was still a little bit of that hurt left, but then he covered the rest up with a sly grin. "See, you do TOO like alliterations."

Puzzled at the change in subject, she said simply "Huh?"

"You said 'Marvin, the mollusk the size of Manhattan'. That's an alliteration. Not a terribly good one yet, but with the right teacher, they can be rolling off your tongue in no time."

Kate rolled her eyes at him and held up her free hand. "Please, no. It was an accident, I swear."

Rick looked at his watch, reluctantly let go of her hand and started to get up. "Time's a wastin'. We have to get going or we might be late."

"For what?"

He shook his head and wagged his finger at her. "Nuh uh uh. It's a surprise." Then, closing his eyes as if remembering something, he got serious and apologetic again. "Kate, I'm so sorry."

"What for?"

'We got talking about all of that...heavy stuff, and I totally forgot for a bit that it was your birthday. I did not mean to ruin your birthday with all of that serious talk. I'm so sorry. I wanted this day to be wonderful for you. I really am sorry. It was all so stupid of me to bring up anyway...you're here, and that's what matters." He sounded so sweet.

She touched his cheek very briefly with the lightest of fingertip touches. "No, it's fine. Really." She pulled her hand back right after touching his cheek, kind of shocked to see that she had done that in the first place. But she hadn't thought about it, had just acted on her impulses when he was self flagellating like that.

But she didn't have time to reflect because he once again had his arm on her back and was escorting her back to the car, so they could be on their way to who knows where.

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It turned out that she had plenty of time to reflect after all, after he dropped her off for her next activity, an afternoon at a spa, getting what he called 'the works'. He registered her under the name of Nicole Jameson, a combination of the names of the characters in his the 'Heat' series. Although, he told her that he changed the name of 'Nikki' to the more formal 'Nicole' because of when she'd said that 'Nikki Heat' was a stripper's name. His thought about the pseudonym was that even if someone were to recognize him, they wouldn't see Kate Beckett's name anywhere to be able to glean that she was with him. Even an out of the way place like this attracted people from all over, and he'd learned to never underestimate who might be a fan and go ape-shit crazy if they knew he, and by association Kate, was around.

As she laid on the massage table, face down, getting her muscles turned deliciously into jelly, she thought back to the slip of the tongue that she made back at the restaurant, when she said he was 'a lot more than a friend.' It just came out of her mouth, and she didn't even think twice about it until she saw Rick's face. Is that how she thought of him now, as 'more than a friend'? How much more?

She knew that she'd been surprised by the new way she'd been looking at him in the last several days, and even more surprised by the way he'd been pulling away even though he'd had a couple of prime chances to do the opposite. And she'd hatched that little plan yesterday to keep him a little closer, and a little off balance. The awkwardness seemed to leave after that, even when they woke up wrapped around each other after snoozing together all night. They had fun; he always injected some fun into things, which is why she realized a while ago that she liked having him around. But now, she had to admit that she also liked the new-found closeness with him, even though that closeness was very much in its infancy yet. However, she still remembered the look on his face when she implied, through her fumbling and very bad explanation, that he wasn't a friend, even though that's not what she meant at all. Yet when she tried to explain herself and the 'more than a friend' comment popped out, she didn't know what to do with that one either. And she knew was going to have to figure out what she did mean by 'more than a friend, figure out how much more, and then figure out what to do about it.

And while maybe somewhere deep inside, her heart knew the answer to the the question of 'how much more', her brain was just not ready to acknowledge that yet.

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Rick used the time that Kate was at the spa to do a little shopping and a little reflecting. He didn't intend for her birthday lunch to be the interrogation that it had turned into. He just started the questioning about how she said his name as playful banter, and it did start out that way, but then it deviated quickly into something else. He never wanted to make her uncomfortable, and he could tell she was. He tried to cover it up, but when she'd said the thing about friends, he just blurted it out, asking if he was not her friend. He gave himself a mental slap side of the head. Way to go, big guy. Nice way to put the lady on the spot and ruin a special lunch. So he tried to get out if it by taking her hand and sweet talking her, even though he didn't know if it could be considered stereotypical sweet talk when it was true. But then she had to go and throw out the 'more than a friend' comment and he was so stunned by the comment that he put her on the spot again. Cue the second mental slap.

It was just that, even though he didn't really know it until she said it, it seemed like he'd been waiting forever for her to say those words to him, that he was more than a friend to her. More than a writer, more than a partner, more than an annoyance. But he could tell that she'd been about as surprised by the words as he was. Two days ago, he'd vowed to keep his distance from her, because he'd rather be in her life like this, as a friend she felt comfortable with, than not at all if he tried to push things too much and she bolted or didn't trust him. Yet just as he'd decided that, things started to happen to throw them together, and Kate was surprising him with her reaction: she wasn't running from him. In fact, she was doing just the opposite, although it was very subtle, and he was still wondering about the context. Was it just because they were away from home, just the two of them? She asked him to rub suntan lotion on her. Hell, she stayed all night on the couch with him, snuggled with him, and she seemed in no hurry to get up. He would have stayed like that forever if not for the fear of the embarrassment of wetting himself and royally grossing her out.

And today, when he'd had the bicycle mishap, he could see that she was concerned, and she didn't give him grief about it (although he knew she could have gotten a LOT of mileage from it). At the restaurant, she'd held his hand and had touched his cheek as they were leaving. What if, by some miraculous chance, her feelings toward him were changing?

IF that was a possibility, even a remote one, IF they had a chance to be 'more than friends', then he knew he had to go slowly. IF he was given a chance, he was NOT going to mess it up. He would be his same old charming self, and he would wait for her cues. He could be cool. He could be charming. He could be patient. She was the one in charge, who was calling the shots, even though she had no idea that she was.

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When Kate emerged from the spa, she looked wonderful. She was relaxed, smiling, and she must have had her hair done too because it was loose and flowing in an artfully tousled look. He She got in the convertible and leaned back against the seat with her eyes closed. "Ohhhh, man. That was really something. I gotta say, Ca...Rick, you really know how to show a girl a good time. And you weren't even there."

"Glad you enjoyed it."

"Enjoyed it? That's like saying that the Grand Canyon is a little hole in the ground. After that seaweed wrap and the massage, I didn't know if I was going to be able to get off the table or if I was just going to melt down and ooze onto the floor."

"Relaxed, huh?"

"And how. That Hans, oh, boy, does he know what to do," she continued in a soft, slow and sultry tone. "Those fingers of his are like magic. He knows exactly where to press...how to move...just how hard to push..." she trailed off on a short moan, and it seemed to Rick like she was reliving the experience again. Listening to her, though, Rick wasn't sure exactly _what_ experience she was reliving. And he heard her words, his very vivid imagination started to run wild and painted a picture in his mind that did not sit well with him.

And of course, though Kate thoroughly enjoyed the spa and the massage was top notch, she was choosing her words specifically for the effect they would have on Rick. Simply put, she was messing with him again. And oh, was it working!

He didn't say anything, but looking at him out of the corner of her eye, she could see that her words had quite the effect on him. His lips were set in a grim line and he was holding on to the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. She could see beads of perspiration beginning to form on his forehead, and she suspected that they had little to do with the climate. Gone was the guy that had given her the warm, welcoming grin when he picked her up. She decided to play a bit more before she put him out of his misery.

"Hans said it was such a _pleasure_ to work on someone who keeps in shape. From someone of his vast abilities, that was a real compliment."

He still kept quiet, but she could swear his face was getting just a bit redder. His foot also started getting a little heavy on the accellerator of the car, so she decided the game had gone on long enough.

"Something wrong, Rick?"

"No, no, nothing's wrong," he said in a clipped tone, his words more rushed and higher pitched than normal. "Everything is perfectly fine. A-OK. No problemo. Why would you think anything was wrong?"

She smiled at him slyly. "Well, for starters, you're going about 45 in a 25 zone,"-he checked the speed and swore as he applied the brake-"and next, you're talking fast and high like a teenage boy before his voice changes, and you're gripping the wheel like you're about to fall out of the car. Lastly, um, you just drove right past the house." She pointed behind her.

As he realized she was right on all counts, he let out an exasperated sigh as he turned around in a driveway. She laughed at him then, and he glanced sideways at her. "What's so funny?"

"You! My God, you are SO easy!" She was still sitting in the seat, snickering at him but trying not to burst out laughing, when he pulled into the driveway. He stopped the car with a jerk in front of the house.

"Wha..." He couldn't figure out what was causing her mirth, and then he saw the gleam in her eye, processed her words, and came to the slow realization that he had just been played. By an expert. "Hans?" he prompted.

"Is a very nice, 50-ish, balding man who has been happily married to Marie for almost 30 years. They just became grandparents of twin granddaughters. He really is an excellent massage therapist, but the rest of it...I just repeat, you are SO easy." She laughed again at the look on his face, a look of utter disbelief.

"I thought you..."

"Yeah, I know. But really, Rick, did you think that I would actually come down here with you, stay with you, let you treat me to a spa day, and then..."

"Boink?" he suggested.

"...the massage guy? And TELL you about it?" she finished. "Really?"

"Well, when you put it like that, no." He let out a long, slow breath. "You really had me going there, Detective. Mother would have been proud of you for that little act." He continued, but changed into his own version of seductive woman's voice as he mimicked her. "Hans knows how to move and just how hard to push...Hans said feeling my body was such a pleasure..."

"Hey, I didn't say _that_!" Kate protested.

"Close enough. You really had me going. Once you started, my imagination took over and I just started seeing red. I'm a writer, so I'm used to translating thoughts and ideas into words, and words into pictures in my head. And the pictures that I got in my head were...disturbing." Rick shook his head as if to rid the images from his brain. He had also neglected to mention to Kate that the disturbing part was not what she was describing (or what he thought she was describing), but that it wasn't him who was cast in the starring role beside her.

"Uh huh." She didn't respond more than that, and he didn't know how to take it.

"Was this your little payback for me foiling your little plan by pulling you over the couch the other night?"

"This? Hans? No way. This was nothing. This was just a little fun. When I get my payback, you'll know it." She raised her eyebrows at him and smiled a devious smile. "But you know what, Rick? This is turning out to be kind of a fun birthday. Thanks." And with that, she got out of the car and went into the house.

But leaving him to plot and plan was not a smart move on her part. She'd find that out tonight, in a grand, very public way. Because for someone with his imagination, he had no shortage of ideas for payback for his teasing Detective. It would certainly be the finale to a birthday he was sure she'd never forget.

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Kate will get a little public payback in the next chapter, I hope you stay tuned! And thanks for reading this monster of a chapter! I'd love to hear what you thought of it.


	16. Chapter 16

_**Thanks for all of the reviews on the last chapter! I love seeing the notifications saying that I have a new review.**_

_**Anyway, I SO wanted to get this done yet today, so here it is! I think it showcases my (at times) somewhat odd sense of humor, so I hope you all like it. Enjoy!**_

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Kate stared at the person in front of her, disbelief on her face. She wanted the floor to swallow her up, she wanted a power outage, she wanted a bomb to go off outside-anything to direct everyone's attention away from her. The evening had been going so well...how had it gone south this fast? Of course she really did know the answer: Rick. She tried to slump a little lower in her chair and covered her face with her hand. She thought she just might die of embarrassment before the night was over.

God, paybacks were a bitch.

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_Hours earlier_...

"You have some time to relax or whatever before we have our next activity. Of course, it sounds like you and _Hans_ might have done your collective share of _relaxing_ earlier."

Kate laughed. "Oh, poor Rick, are you still smarting from being so gullible?"

Rick stuck out her tongue at her before turning to the refrigerator. He grabbed a couple of bottles of lemonade and handed her one. "I think from now on, every time I hear the name 'Hans', my mind is going to be filled with disturbing images." He snapped his fingers. "I know! He could be my bad guy in the next Nikki Heat book!"

"Rick if you'd actually _seen_ the real Hans, you would know how totally ridiculous that idea is."

"But, alas, all I have is my imagination, and right now even though I know that the truth is much more boring than the fiction of my imagination, my mind is forming an image that just screams that he-the fictional Hans-would be a really nice good-guy-that's-really-bad."

Kate patted his shoulder. "Well, you just run with that idea then. But if and when I ever read that book, don't expect me to do anything but laugh when I read about your villianous Hans because I know the real one that yours is based off of."

"No you won't. Because with my incredible storytelling abilities, you will get so wrapped up in the story that you will forget everything except the amazing scene that I draw for you in your mind. You'll envision the scene, and not only that, you'll feel the scene...the smell in the air, the bite of the wind on your face. You'll feel the fear in the pit of your stomach. When you're done, you will be so caught up with the story of the evil Hans that you will not only forget the real Hans, but you may just forget your own name." He had been leaning closer to her, over the counter, as he weaved his tale of the evil Hans, his voice lowering and getting more dramatic as he went on.

But his words didn't have the desired effect on her this time. She patted his head like he was a small child and said "Sure, Rick. You just go right on thinking that." And she sauntered away, leaving him pouting, elbows leaning on the counter, chin in his hands, looking dejected because he was thinking he was losing his touch. She paused at the top of the open staircase. "What should I wear tonight, for whatever you have planned?"

Without even thinking about it, he said "That dress that you got the first day, the first one I saw after I walked into the door of that shop." He said it so offhandedly and without enthusiasm that she did a double take. He just got so bummed out when his stories didn't thoroughly enthrall and captivate. Poor Rick. Well, she hoped the dress would snap him out of whatever funk he was in.

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Dinner was at a little, out of the way restaurant close to the resort he'd mentioned on the first day. It was quiet and secluded, and even the interior of the restaurant seemed to give the illusion of privacy through the interesting architecture of cozy little alcoves, along with strategically placed potted plants and room screens. But little and out of the way didn't mean that the food was second class. On the contrary, it was phenomenal. They both dined on lobster and filet with a perfectly cooked and seasoned vegetable medley. Even though Kate said she couldn't eat another bite or she might bust the seams on her dress, Rick still ordered tiramisu for dessert, saying that he hadn't gotten her a birthday cake, everyone loves tiramisu, and, with waggling eyebrows, he wouldn't mind it at all if she showed a little more skin, through ripped seams or whatever circumstances. Of course she ate some, because when the waiter brought it to the table, it looked heavenly and tasted just as good.

Before the tiramisu, Rick presented her with a long velvet jeweler's box. "I saw this and I thought it was perfect for you. To commemorate an experience, and so you always remember this trip. Fondly, I hope." She opened the box to find a delicate gold chain with several free-floating charms on it-all different kinds of seashells. The center shell was a conch, slightly larger than the rest, a miniature version of the first one she had found with the live animal inside.

"It's beautiful," Kate breathed as she stared at it.

"I know it's not something you can wear everywhere, but like I said, I thought it was perfect. So even if it just sits in your jewelry box, I hope you'll take it out once in a while and remember your birthday trip."

"Why would you think I wouldn't wear it?"

"Kate, I may be a guy, but I've been around women before. If there's one thing I've learned, especially from my mother and my daughter, it's that jewelry is a very personal thing for women, and unless it involves diamonds or a substantial amount of numbers between the dollar sign and the decimal point, they like to be consulted. Surprises are a no-no."

Touched that he would not only get her something with some personal meaning, but that he would expect-assume-that she wouldn't even wear it, she shook her head. "No, this surprise is a yes-yes. I meant it when I said it was beautiful. You're right, it probably wouldn't be the thing to wear at work, but I know I'll try to wear it when I can. It won't just sit on my dresser. Thank you."

"This was just a little...tangible something to give you. You know that little spa that I've heard you and Lanie talk about back home?" She nodded. "Well, you have ten treatments or whatever you call them, available whenever you want to use them. Although they probably don't have Hans there," he winked at her to let her know he was joking. At the beginning of her protest, he held up a hand. "But so often you look like you could use a little getaway, a little forced relaxation when you're working insane hours or are in the middle of a tough case. So sometime when you can spare a few hours, you just pop over there and get rejuvenated."

"Castle...Rick," she amended, "I know how much that place costs! That's probably why you heard Lanie and I talk about it...we were talking about how long we'd have to give up eating to be able to afford another visit to the place. Ten visits? THAT is insane. You can't do that!"

"Too bad, I did it. It's done. You have to use them or they'll go to waste. Or should I give them to Ryan and Esposito?" he teased.

"Don't you dare!" she said quickly.

He smiled a cocky grin at her, but then took her hand and kissed it. "Happy birthday, Kate. And don't protest any more. Just smile at me adoringly and say 'Thanks, Rick'."

She made a show of gazing into his eyes and batting her eyelashes at him, but then, laughing, she dropped the act and smiled at him for real. "Thanks, Rick. Really."

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After they left the restaurant, Rick drove them to an upscale little area that had a few restaurants as well as some boutiques. "I have a few things to take care of, so I'm going to drop you off here. Browse around for a little while in the shops, and then I'll meet you in that place right there,"-he pointed at the building across the parking lot-"in about half an hour. Have some sort of tropical fruity drink concoction while you wait. Oh, and by the way, when you go inside, use the name 'Nicole Jameson' again...they'll be expecting you."

Kate looked at him warily. "Castle, what are you doing?"

"Kate, don't look so suspicious. I just have one more birthday thing that I need to take care of for you. No biggie. Then I'll meet you inside and we'll have a couple of fruity drinks-mine will be non-alcoholic, of course. And I've heard that they have a good show, so we'll watch the show and then we'll put the lid on your tropical birthday celebration. OK?"

She was still looking at him with suspicion in her eyes. "What if I said no?"

Rick's stomach lurched...he'd just assumed that he could sweet talk her into going along with his plan. He should have known better. So he tried to salvage what he could. "All right, all right! I have one more thing planned for your birthday, OK? It's something that you said a while ago that you'd really love, so I wanted to give it to you. But I just need a little time to prepare the gift, OK?"

She still regarded him with wary eyes, but she capitulated. "Half an hour?"

He smiled his publicity grin designed to bring women to their knees. Unfortunately, even despite her suspicious nature, she felt a little punch in her gut when he used that smile on her. "Half an hour," he confirmed.

She got out of the convertible and started the leisurely walk around the complex to the restaurant he'd indicated. Rick gave her a little wave and drove off, at least without squealing the tires. She had to be thankful for something, right?

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

More than forty-five minutes after Rick had left her, she sat in the darkened restaurant, waiting for the show to start and still waiting for Rick to appear. It was supposed to be some sort of hybrid of a comedic karaoke performance. Where the hell was Rick? She was already on her second fruity drink and was quickly approaching needing her third.

Finally, the lights dimmed and she could see people getting the stage ready. 'Great,' she thought, 'he tells me to come in here and wait for him, and then he ditches me. On my birthday, of all things. He probably got a call from one of his writer buddies and is sitting out in the car somewhere, playing online poker on his iPhone.' She took another long sip of her fruity concoction, finishing it off, and then signaled to the waiter for another one.

Just then, the emcee came out on the small stage. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special treat for you tonight. There's a special lady in our audience tonight who has a secret crush on teen idol Justin Bieber. So Justin has agreed to make a one-time-only appearance here tonight!" The emcee clapped and other people started half-heartedly clapping too, with wondering looks on their faces. The emcee continued, "However, he's feeling a bit under the weather and his voice isn't up to the usual quality that you may remember, so please go easy on him. Ladies and gentlemen, please, let's welcome Justin to our stage!"

The music started and more people clapped. And 'Justin' came out on the stage and started tapping his foot to the opening bars of "Baby". Only it wasn't Justin, Kate noticed with unmitigated shock as she was taking a sip of her fruity drink. She choked and almost spewed the drink onto the table in front of her. When she recovered, she could do nothing to stop her jaw from gaping open and her eyes from going wide with shock.

Richard Castle, best-selling, millionaire, playboy author was up on the stage, wearing a Justin Bieber wig complete with the signature comb-down, dressed in the garb of a teenage rock star boy: skinny jeans riding halfway down his ass, tight-fitting t-shirt with a cargo shirt over it, medallion around his neck, with skateboard shoes on his feet. He even had the teenage boy pout.

Around her, people started snickering, realizing that it was a farce, but staying quiet because they knew it was a comedy show and they wanted to see how it would play out.

As if having him up there, dressed ridiculously, wasn't bad enough, then 'Justin' stepped up to the microphone, and in a laughingly higher-pitched voice reminiscent of a teenage boy, he said "This one is for Nicole, who I know has adored me from afar since my career began, and just can't get enough of me."

Upon hearing the higher voice coming from someone who was so obviously not a teenager, the snickers and outright laughter increased around her, just as, to her eternal mortification, a spotlight from the ceiling shined right on her, highlighting her so everyone watching would be 100% certain of who this 'Nicole' really was.

Kate stared at Rick in front of her on the stage, disbelief on her face. She wanted the floor to swallow her up, she wanted a power outage, she wanted a bomb to go off outside-anything to direct everyone's attention away from her. The evening had been going so well...how had it gone south this fast? Of course she really did know the answer: Rick. She tried to slump a little lower in her chair and covered her face with her hand. She thought she just might die of embarrassment before the night was over. Bury her under a palm tree.

They had been going back and forth with their banter and one-upping each other since they arrived. And damn, but it was fun! At least it was when she was on the giving side and he was on the receiving side, like today with the Hans incident. And she knew without a doubt that he was attempting to even the score with this little number.

God, paybacks were a bitch.

She knew why he'd chosen to do this: she flashed back to a case several months ago that dealt with the murder of a 14 year old music and video buff. To find clues to the killer, they'd had to sift through countless hours of videos, a lot of which were hybrids of the victim's videos interspersed with snippets of Justin Bieber videos. The victim was a big Justin Bieber fan. The guys were getting a laugh dissing young Justin, so Beckett and Lanie tried to play devil's advocate to annoy the guys, and they raved about how they loved Justin, how he was so cute, was an awesome singer, and oh, if they were a decade and a half younger, they would totally go for him. Kate remembered saying that she'd loved him since she first saw him on Youtube, and he was every young girl's crush. Apparently Castle hadn't forgotten that case, or what she'd said. 'Boy, your past can really come back to haunt you,' she thought.

As the music started, so did a very low sound of the real Justin's voice, but the voice of the imposter Justin could be heard over it. Unfortunately. He affected a higher pitched voice to mimic that of a teenage boy. It was off-key and he missed some words here and there, but the audience (except for her) was eating it up. Some of the women had stood up and were dancing around, laughing as they nudged their significant others as if to say 'Hey, why won't you do that? THIS guy does!'

The author formerly known as Rick was now dancing around on stage, strutting back and forth like he was living out some sort of regressing teenage pop star fantasy. He got closer and closer to the end of the stage, and Kate was scared he might fall off and hurt himself. But then he hopped off the stage, and came to stand several feet in front of her, looking right at her as he 'sang' most of the time.

When, oh when was the ground going to open up and swallow her whole? It could not happen soon enough for Kate.

When he got to the lyrics that said "shake me till you wake me from this bad dream", he executed a little shimmy-shake that had her burying her head in her hands again but drew delighted squeals from the ladies. And then "I'm goin down, down, down, down" made him get lower and lower until he sunk to his knees in front of her. The last line of that verse, "And I just can't believe my first love won't be around," had him leaning in close to her as he 'sang', but then he hopped back up to his feet in a a very limber move as he started singing the "Baby, baby, baby..." refrain and turned and hopped back up on the stage amidst what was now full fledged laughter, hoots, whistles and applause from the rest of the audience.

Kate was still wondering when the ground was going to swallow her up.

He continued to do his half-karaoke number around the stage for the rest of the song. As he got near the end and 'Justin' started singing 'Now I'm all gone, yeah, yeah...,' he started moving toward the curtain on the back of the stage. As he sang the last line, 'I'm gone,' he stepped behind the curtain and out of site. 'Finally,' Kate thought. She looked at her table and noticed that her attentive waiter had brought out the next fruity concoction. She grabbed it and took several long sips through the straw, draining the glass halfway in no time.

Kate looked around at all of the people applauding his 'act,' whistling for him and just generally laughing and having a good time. Amazing. Several people seated near her leaned over and commented on the 'performance', things like "wow, how did you ever get him to do that?", "he really can't sing but he can perform!" or "that has to be the most hilarious bad singing and bad celebrity impression that I've ever seen!"

Yet he still didn't come back. She finished her drink and was contemplating another, when her waiter discreetly told her that 'Mr. Justin' was waiting for her out the side entrance and that the bill had been taken care of already.

She waited until the next Karaoke act had started and then slipped away through the door the waiter indicated. She saw Castle sitting in the convertible under a palm tree at the edge of the parking lot. She went over to the car and got in. She gave him a stern look.

"I should kill you for that."

"You don't have your gun."

"There are other ways."

"Perhaps, but you know you deserved that little treat."

"Hans?"

"Hans. And the water in the face this morning."

"This is war."

"Bring it on."

She leaned back to look at the night sky through the palm leaves above her. "You're right, this will be a birthday I'll never forget."

"Glad to hear it. I aim to be memorable, if nothing else."

"I think my retinas are burned from the sight of you shaking your bootie in skinny jeans." She looked at him sternly again. "Lose the skinny jeans, Rick."

"Gladly. After what happened today on the bike, they were kind of...binding anyway."

She held up her hand. "Too much information, Castle."

They sat for another few minutes, and then Kate said "Rick?"

"Yeah?"

"Turn on the damn radio. I need to listen so _something_ else so I can get 'baby, baby, baby, ohhh' out of my head."

Rick complied, also starting the car.

"And Rick?"

"Yeah?"

"Hat-head isn't great, bed-head is pretty bad on you, but Bieber-head is the absolute worst." And, saying that, she couldn't keep a straight face anymore and burst out laughing. He glanced in the mirror at his hair, matted down from the humidity and the wig, and grimaced.

"Go home before someone sees you like that."

"Once again, gladly," he said, as he tore out of the parking lot.

_**

* * *

**_

I'll apologize right now to anyone who likes Justin Bieber. Although the refrain of 'Baby' is annoying beyond belief (to me, anyway), he is a pretty good singer. But when I got the idea in my head of Castle wearing a Justin Bieber wig and dancing around up on a stage, and Beckett cringing in embarrassment, I could not resist giving them that little adventure.

_**I hope you all enjoyed it. As usual, I would greatly appreciate a review to hear what you thought of it.**_

_**(And for those who were disappointed by no Casketty goodness in this chapter, remember that this is only day 3. The vacation has really only just begun... (that's a hint) Please don't stop reading just because the birthday is done!)**_


	17. Chapter 17

_**Finally...an update! I'm sorry this wasn't a few days earlier but there were some problems. I asked Castle and Beckett what they wanted to do next in their story, but they just wouldn't tell me. It was really frustrating. I just had to figure out something on my own, but it took some time. **_

_**Anyway, the next installment isn't as long as the others, but it's not my shortest either. I hope you like it.**_

_**(On a side note, I had to really laugh at the fact that Justin Bieber got Entertainer of the Year at the AMAs the next day after I posted the chapter about the Bieber imitation.)**_

* * *

Rick woke up on Tuesday morning and felt strange. Something wasn't right. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something didn't feel...normal. It was late-after 8:30-well, not that late, but late according to Kate's internal timeclock.

So, not wanting to ignore the uneasy feeling, he raced downstairs to see what was wrong, what had him feeling so prickly and had the hairs on his neck standing up. Nothing. He went onto the deck by the pool and found...nothing. He walked around the upstairs deck to see if she was reading. Nothing. No Kate. Moving a little faster, he went to her room and found it empty. Moving even faster yet, he went down to the beach. She wasn't in the waves looking for shells, and she wasn't sitting on the lounge chairs. My goodness, where was she? He was really starting to get nervous. Where was she?

He stood there on the beach. He didn't know what to think. She wasn't in the house, she wasn't on the beach. Where could she be? Where would she go? Should he call the police? She WAS the police; he shouldn't have to call the police on her. He went back to sit down on the edge of one of the lounge chairs. He ran his fingers through his hair, wondering where she could be. Really, he probably shouldn't worry...she was a big girl and she could certainly take care of herself. So why did he have a nagging sort of worry-feeling in the pit of his stomach?

Forcing himself to chill out, he got up to go into the house and calmly wait for her. Maybe he'd make some coffee, start to make something for breakfast. As he turned around to go into the house, he automatically scanned the beach one more time. That was when the bright pink color way down the beach caught his eye.

Hot pink was not a normal beach color, at least not a naturally occurring one.

He put his hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun and tried to get a better look. Yes, it was a person in a hot pink shirt, walking strangely just out of the reach of the waves. He unconsciously started walking toward the person. As he got nearer, he could see the person was wearing a bright pink form-fitting tank top and black spandex workout shorts. And then he could see that the person was Kate. Whew. Knowing it was her and she wasn't 'lost' anymore, he slowed his walk a bit. But when he realized that the strange walk was really a limp, and she was hardly putting any weight on her right foot, he broke into a run.

When he reached her, he automatically went to her right side and put his arm around her, supporting her. He could see that her foot was bloody. "Kate, what happened?" he asked, the concern he was feeling for her dripping from his words.

"I wanted to go for a run...get some exercise, you know? I haven't exactly been getting very much exercise the last few days, except when you made me pedal for you on the tandem bike yesterday. So I went for a run on the beach," she grimaced and took a sharp breath, then explained "Stupid thing hurts and the saltwater eats at it," and then continued, "and I wanted to go barefoot, since it was the beach, after all, then I could run in the water. Thought that would be kind of nice. Except I didn't look where I was going-stupid me-and I ran right into this...deposit, I guess...of shells that had been left by the tide. No sand, just solid shells, and one of them must have been pretty sharp and cut my foot but good."

"Oh, Kate, sit down, let me see it."

"No, just help me back to the house. I want to wash it out with some normal water and bandage it up."

"Kate, you might need a doctor. Stitches."

"No, it'll be OK. I don't think it's very deep; I think it's more at an angle and just needs some of those adhesive strip things over it. And before you ask, yes, I've had a tetanus shot. Last year." Then she looked at him and really registered what he was wearing. Or rather, was not wearing. Of course, with her arm around him, it was obvious he wasn't wearing a shirt. But the bottoms she didn't register right away. And she really didn't want to stand there and gawk, either. "Uh, Castle?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you forget something this morning?"

"Well, I haven't even made coffee yet. I...I don't know...I felt like something was weird or wrong, so I went looking for you. And you weren't anywhere in the house so I came down here, and I didn't see you right away. And then I was going to go back into the house but I looked around once more and saw you."

"No, that's not what I was talking about," she said, touched that he had actually gone looking for her when he didn't know where she was. But back to the point. "Do you always run around the beach in your boxers?"

He stopped walking and looked down at himself. "Oops. Ah, I didn't really think about what I was wearing, I guess."

"Just try not to do anything so that the fly gapes open." And she forced her gaze off in the distance so that she didn't start unconsciously watching just for that very thing to happen. Although it was really hard to keep her gaze off the front of his boxers when she had to keep looking down to make sure she wasn't going to step on any more shells.

He helped her hobble into the house. When they crossed the deck, he stopped her for a second while he quickly grabbed a beach towel that had been laying there and wrapped it around his waist as he commented, "That should keep me from flashing anyone." Then they continued inside. He sat her on the bathroom counter and stuck her foot in the sink and turned on the water. "There. Now wash it out. I'm going to...uh...change." And he bolted from the room.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick had never been so glad to see a towel in all his life. He had to help Kate walk, and he had to have his arm around her to do that. And as soon as she pointed out his lack of clothing, he was fighting a losing battle against the response she evoked in him. Of course when a beautiful woman points out a guy's underwear, when that's ALL he's wearing, when he has an arm wrapped around her and she's leaning on him and smells really good...certain things will happen to the guy's body. Involuntarily. No matter how much he tries to think of other things.

He had his arm around her, and he was only wearing boxers. Not a good combination. Not when he had spent another night tossing and turning and thinking of her and where he had woken up the previous morning. Despite his efforts to keep calm after she pointed out his lack of appropriate attire, Rick was certain that the fly on his boxers was going to do more than gape very very soon, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. Then he spotted the towel and almost ran for it before he realized that he was still holding Kate up. He tried to turn away from her as he secured the towel around his waist, and prayed that she didn't see. The towel wasn't the best camoflage, but it was better than his boxers, which had the fly hole that would only serve to showcase, not hide, his "growing" problem.

Crisis averted. Now, time for a very quick, very cold shower.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He came back 10 minutes later to find her still in the bathroom, but with a towel pressed to her foot. "It's really nothing, Rick," she said when she saw the concerned look on his face. "Really, it just needs some steri strips to hold the cut closed." He gently pulled back the towel and looked at the cut on the arch of her foot. He was no doctor, but he had to admit that, cleaned up, it didn't look nearly as bad as he thought it would.

"There's a first aid kit, but it probably doesn't have steri strips. I had a quick shower before I changed, so let me run out to the store and get some. There has to be a pharmacy around here somewhere. I'll check my phone. But you probably don't want to sit here all morning. Let's get you out of here. Inside or outside?"

"Outside, on the deck." He started to help her hop outside, but then in a grand show of chivalry, he swept her into his arms. She didn't expect it so she let out a little squeal.

"Rick, put me down!"

"Nah. This is easier." And he had to admit, it was kind of fun, sweeping her off her feet like that. How often did he get to play 'Knight in Shining Armor' for the intrepid Detective Kate Beckett? Rick continued out of the bathroom toward the back deck.

"Rick, don't you dare drop me! I _can_ walk now, you know. I just needed help on the beach because I didn't want to get sand in the cut."

"Are you insulting my masculinity? First the bike incident yesterday, and then you thinking that I'm going to drop you...my manliness is really taking a hit here. Have a little pity on me."

"Awww...poor Ricky." As she said it, she put her free hand on his face and patted it sweetly, like she was patting a small child. But considering that her other arm was wrapped around his shoulders and he was holding her pretty closely already because he was carrying her, the gesture that started out as sweet quickly took on new meaning as they both realized that they were actually in a rather intimate embrace. She could smell the light, masculine aroma of the aftershave he had put on after his quick shower. He could feel the warmth of her body as he held her close. The smiles slowly left their faces. They looked into each other's eyes, and both gazes flitted to the other's lips, before they locked eyes again. They leaned closer to each other as their eyes slowly dropped shut. Almost of their own volition, their mouths moved closer together, until-

_Thump!_

_"Uh!"_

_(shriek!)_

_Crash!_

As they were just about to get _very_ personal with each other, Rick-who was still walking as he was carrying Kate, but was obviously concentrating on something else and was not paying attention to where he was going-walked directly into the back of the couch. With the lack of concentration and the momentum that he had, he had no hope of stopping himself or righting himself and did exactly what she had just told him not to do-he dropped her. Luckily for them both, he dropped her on the couch. But because his instinct was to hold her, he ended up not being able to catch himself or break his fall. Not only did he land on the couch, but because he was so off-balance, he ended up half-somersaulting, half-flipping all the way over and landed on his back on the floor in front of the couch with a crash and a grunt.

After the cacophony of clumsiness that had just happened, the room dropped into silence as Rick lay sprawled on his back in front of the couch. It would have been nice if he'd hit the side with the chaise lounge, where they'd spent the night, but no such luck for Rick. A full ten seconds passed, neither moving or saying a thing, when Rick, still laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, finally asked, "What in the world just happened?"

Kate, who was still looking around, shell-shocked, came back to her senses at his words. "Thought it would be obvious, Rick. You freaking dropped me after all! Consider your manliness royally insulted...by yourself!" And with that, she collapsed back on the couch in laughter.

Rick gingerly raised up, feeling encouraged for his health as he felt no stabbing pains anywhere in his body. Propping himself up with his hand, he turned back to look at a mirthful Kate, still howling in laughter. She saw him looking at her and her laughing slowed, but then she made a motion with her hands, drawing swirls in the air, as if to indicate how he flipped head over heels over the couch. She looked at him at the end of her pantomime, and collapsed in laughter again.

Rick shook his head. "You have absolutely no respect for my masculinity," he announced in a tone reminiscent of an English butler scolding a 10 year old boy to use his proper manners.

"WHAT masculinity?" Kate couldn't resist teasing him a little bit.

He turned over on his knees and crawled closer to her on the couch. "It seems you didn't have a problem with my masculinity before we did our little gymnastics act. How about we pick up where we left off before the couch flip number?" he suggested as he began to lean slowly closer to her.

When she realized what he was talking about, a brief look of wariness and uncertainty flashed in her eyes before she put a hand on his chest to stop him. "Slow down, big boy. The mood is gone now. G-O-N-E gone. Poof. Better luck next time." And after she patted his chest with the hand she used to stop him, she got up and started limping out to the deck herself.

Rick was shocked. Beckett...Kate...had almost kissed him. Voluntarily! But then he just had to go and fall over the couch. Swift move. But then...oh, my gosh, he thought as he froze...NEXT TIME? Did she really just say _next time_? He'd made the vow that he wasn't going to do anything to pressure her; it was all on her terms. And then he had to go break his vow by trying to continue things. Stupid. And she stopped him; what did he expect? But did she just say 'next time'? She didn't kill him or maim him when she stopped him, she just...it was like when the cell towers couldn't handle the traffic. "All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later." Or, in this case, "Libidos are being primed but are not ready for ignition. Please set the stage and try your kiss again later."

Setting the stage...now that was something he could do. And if Detective Kate Beckett needed mood, then mood is what she was going to get.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After yelling to Kate that he was going to run out to the store, Kate sat on the deck for a while to think. She almost kissed Rick. Voluntarily! _Kissed him! _She stopped to assess her feelings, and she realized that the concept didn't feel nearly as outrageous, as foreign to her as it would have felt even a week ago. She'd been almost drawn to him as he held her. And if she was honest with herself, she knew that she was not opposed to exploring her changing feelings, even if she wasn't ready to jump into anything yet. She'd been around him for literally years without even really touching the guy, and now they were in close proximity all of the time, and had gotten up close and personal more times in the last several days than she'd ever thought possible. And she'd actually liked it. As weird as it seemed, her feelings for him were changing. And the new ones, well, she was getting used to them more and more. And she liked them. And she wanted to feel more of them.

Although she did still want to hurt him for the Bieber incident last night.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick came back from the store with not only some steri strips to hold the cut closed, but also some of the liquid bandage goop that can be painted over a minor scratch or cut to make it waterproof. "Alexis scraped her leg on some shells when she was boogie boarding once. We painted this on it and she was back in the water in no time. So we can use it on your cut and then you don't have to worry about staying out of the water."

He'd picked up some subs for lunch, so they had an early lunch out on the deck by the pool. They talked easily and companionably, but neither spoke of the 'almost-kiss' of earlier. He picked up some puzzle books (really, Kate thought, he must have bought one of every kind that they had). After lunch, they sat out on the beach and worked on the puzzle books. Rick pulled their chairs closer together and showed her how to do logic problems.

Once, he disappeared into the house and came out with two glasses containing frozen strawberry margaritas. "The perfect beach drink," he explained as he presented it to her. He was right. It was blended to smooth perfection, and tasted wonderful in the warm weather. She worked on her puzzle for a little while longer as she sipped her drink. Rick was quiet next to her, with his eyes closed behind his sunglasses. Then she put it down, and realizing she was kind of sleepy, leaned back in the chair and shut her eyes. After a minute or so, she opened her eyes again and reached over and put her hand on top of Rick's on the arm of the lounge chair, lacing her fingers with his. Then she leaned back in the chair again to drift off.

Rick felt her hand on top of his, felt her fingers lace with his, and a smile curved the edges of his lips. He tightened his fingers just a little bit around hers.

And though neither of them spoke it aloud, both of them laid there in the sunlight, hands entwined, with one common thought: "This is the perfect way to spend a lazy afternoon at the beach."

_**

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**_

Castle is going to get some payback from Kate in the next chapter. The 'war' will continue. And it will have some serious Caskett-y overtones. ;-) It was going to originally happen in this chapter, but then she went and hurt her foot, darn it! Stay tuned!

_**And to everyone, once again, thank you SO MUCH for following this story, and for your continued wonderful comments! I really do appreciate it!**_


	18. Chapter 18

_**Thanks again for all of the wonderful reviews for the last chapter. They continue to mean a lot. I really love reading what you think.**_

_**Now, without further ado, the chapter that I think probably everyone who has been following this story has been waiting for...**_

* * *

Kate woke up slowly, stretching in the king size bed. It was still pretty early, but she knew she wouldn't go back to sleep. She snoozed yesterday on the beach in the afternoon, and then she and Rick had followed up their lazy day at the beach with a lazy evening watching movies-The "Back to the Future" trilogy-on the techno-twisty TV in the living room. Rick had insisted that the more times you watched these movies, especially the first one, the better they got as you recognized all of the nuances and connections that were built in between the past and the future(s). They had both relaxed on the chaise lounge, not as close as they were when they had cuddled together all night, but definitely not as far apart as they had been during their second night here. They sat shoulder to shoulder, and once in a while she would rest her head against his shoulder, but that was it as far as any new-found shows of closeness between them. And she found, in her state of recognizing these new feelings for him, that she was a little disappointed that they weren't more...close. Not in a teenage make-out sense, but just from a cuddling sense. She found out a few nights ago that Rick was a good cuddler and she wouldn't mind trying that again. Still, she was happy that Rick didn't seem to be in such a hurry to get away from her as he had that first day, so that was definitely a good thing. Progress.

And she still had revenge to plan for the Bieber incident. So it was probably a good thing that he wasn't closer, for now; if he was too close, she wouldn't necessarily be able to think clearly enough to think of something good enough.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She checked her foot after her shower and found that it seemed to be healing nicely. She could walk normally, and with the liquid bandage goop, she did indeed discover that she could go in the water. Just to be on the safe side, Rick had picked up a couple of pairs of beach shoes for her when he was at the store the previous day, so she wore those when she walked on the beach.

She and Rick had been roaming the beach looking for treasures for most of the morning. Kate had worn the monokini again, with the bare sides; she had gotten a good response from Rick when she wore it the first time, so she thought it would definitely be a good idea to wear it again. After they went down to the shore, she found she was perfectly content to keep watching and looking for the little sea treasures. She never thought that she would actually enjoy spending hours walking through the sand and the surf looking for little tiny shells, but she was surprised to find that she liked the treasure hunt and the ever-changing conditions. She even outlasted Rick, who went back to the lounge chair to relax. She waded around in the shallow water, and even managed to spot a huge conch shell, almost as big as the first one she had found days ago. She wasn't surprised to find the animal still inside it, so she merely turned it over to look at it and study it.

And when she saw the conch, her mind started formulating an idea. She needed revenge for the Bieber incident, and this just might work. It might work very nicely indeed.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick was still asleep when Kate finally had all of the details worked out in her head. She went behind him and leaned on the back of the chair where he was reclined and dozing. Ever so lightly, she traced the outline of his face with her fingertips. As he stirred, she purred at him, "Does that feel nice, Rick?" He nodded his head lightly and murmured "Mmhmm" as the the corners of his mouth tipped up in a small, sleepy smile.

She ran her fingers through his hair, and as he made a move as if to get up, she took charge and eased him back down onto the chair. "No, just relax, close your eyes and enjoy the sensation. Is that good? Sometimes, just the lightest touch is the most powerful, don't you think?"

Rick was woken up from his nap by Kate's feather-light touch on his face. He never expected it, and for a few seconds he thought he was lost in another one of his Beckett-inspired dreams, which were becoming more frequent all of a sudden. But then he registered the crash of the waves on the shore, and realized that she was standing behind him, doing these delicious things to his face and hair. And she was talking, but it was getting really hard to comprehend what she was saying when she was doing what she was doing.

Hard.

Yup, that was starting to sum things up very nicely. It didn't take much, not where she was concerned. So he tried to stop her, or at least turn around so he could look at her, only to have her tell him to stay where he was. She sounded so authoritative, so sure of herself...and he liked it. Very much. So he stayed where he was and tried to think about something else except for what she looked like in that swimsuit. "_Broccoli,_" he thought,_ "Broccoli is a good thing to think about. Or maybe milk. White milk is about as basic as you can get. Nothing fancy or alluring or sexy about white milk._"

Kate continued to lightly caress his face as she moved to his side. "You're being so good. I think you deserve a little reward. Something special that you've never experienced before." She leaned forward and made sure that he could feel her breath on his face. But instead of leaning in and giving him what he was expecting, she picked up the live mollusk from where she had set it on the towel at her feet. She positioned the live animal side toward Rick's face, where her face had been just moments ago. Speaking very slowly and enunciating each sound carefully, she purred, "Pucker up, Rick."

He turned slightly toward her-well, where he _thought_ she still was-and pursed his lips. And as he leaned forward, his lips came into contact with squishy, slimy form of the animal inside the shell that Kate held. Having never felt "lips" like that before in his life, his eyes flew open and he found himself staring at the vibrant orange invertebrate, held by a widely smiling Kate. The mollusk must not have been very impressed with Rick's "kiss", because the touch made it shrink back into its shell, which resulted in it emitting a spray of water right on Rick's face. He let out a surprised and very loud "Ahhhhhhh!" and jumped back on the chair, as much from the suprise of having water sprayed in his face as having just kissed an invertebrate. The spray surprised Beckett too, even though it had happened to her several days ago, and she jumped back and dropped the mollusk on Rick's chest.

He immediately started swiping at his mouth with his hand as he somehow managed to set the shell down safely on the chair with his other hand.

_"Phew!"_

_"Ach!"_

_"Blech!"_

_"Phew!"_

Kate was so engrossed in her laughter at the sputtering Castle that she wasn't quick enough to anticipate or dodge the hand that reached out to tightly grip her wrist. She tried to stand up and pull away from him, but the man had some amazing hand strength. He hopped up too as she stood.

"You're a tease, Kate," he told her in a voice that was now eerily calm considering the trick she had just played on him.

"If I remember correctly, your exact words after your excellent, and very public Justin Bieber imitation were 'Bring it on'. Did you _not_ tell me to 'Bring it on', Castle?" she asked, her words and expression the epitome of innocence. He narrowed his gaze at her as she continued, "I was merely following instructions."

"Sure." He was still the measure of complete calm. And he just stood there, holding Kate's wrist tightly as he stared at her. "You know perfectly well what you were implying with that little act, Kate. Very misleading."

"Me? Misleading? I didn't mislead you. Now, if you made certain...assumptions...based on what I said, well then, that's all on you."

"I think that when someone breathes seductively on your face and tells you to pucker up, there is no sane person on the face of the earth who would anticipate that they would be kissing a lower form of sea life a few seconds later. In fact," he reasoned, raising an eyebrow at her, "most people would think that they would soon be kissing that very person who was just breathing seductively on their face."

"Mmmhmm. I see," she commented as if she was thinking about what he said. Then she continued coyly, "You know, Rick, since you just kissed a slimy invertebrate, you should probably go brush your teeth. And gargle or something. A lot. That is, if you want to have any hope of kissing _me_ anytime soon."

Rick blinked at her. Did she just say...kissing her? Yeah, she did. She really did. But some newfound strength or resolve in him was letting him remain ultra calm this time. All of the other times that they had come close (well, except for tripping over the couch), he had chickened out, wanting to maintain the status quo of 'friends' without risking driving her away if she didn't want any more, if she was just caught up in the heat of some moment. But now _she_ was the one mentioning kissing, in the context of him and her. The two of them. _Together. _And he knew the time had finally come for him to do something about it.

He pretended to consider what she said, about leaving to gargle, nodded slightly and then moved away like he was going to let go of her wrist and go into the house. But at the last minute, he grabbed her wrist tightly again and yanked her firmly toward him. He snaked his free left arm around her waist, pinning her right and reaching all the way around her and grabbing the forearm of her left, effectively trapping her and rendering her arms basically useless. He held her tightly against his chest. He leaned his face down next to hers, only inches away. His blue eyes held her brown ones. As had happened right before he tripped over the couch, their gazes were each drawn to the others lips.

Kate was amused that she had played Rick so well and that she'd actually gotten him to put his lips on that...thing. But she couldn't believe her boldness when the words about him kissing her came out of her mouth. Given the prior incidents and Rick's recent habit of running (or tripping) when things got too close between them, she fully expected him to scurry into the house. But he surprised her when he made like he was letting her go, but then hauled her against his chest. The man had some strength, she thought, to have her caged as well as he did. She'd already had the experience of feeling herself pressed against his chest, that first day, and strangely enough, a live mollusk in a conch shell was involved that time too. And she discovered she still liked that feeling, very much. In fact, the 'liking' had only gotten more intense as the days wore on. Now it was quickly morphing into 'wanting'.

After several moments of just standing there, definitely in each others personal space, Rick spoke, his breath caressing her face as he formed the words.

"Really, Kate, I think since you went to so much trouble of planning that little treat for me, I think it would be selfish of me not to share my experience with you." And somehow-she hadn't even realized that he'd picked it up again-the shell materialized in his free hand, and he brought it closer and closer to her face. The arm around her waist was like a vise and she couldn't move away. Her gaze flashed between the mollusk and his face as he grinned deviously, and she knew without a doubt what he was planning.

"Oh, no you don't, Castle!" She started squirming in Rick's tight grasp-quite a delicious feeling, Rick discovered-as her head was shaking back and forth.

"What's wrong, Kate? You think it's OK for me to kiss the mollusk, but you won't? Now how fair is that. Face it, Beckett...you're stuck. Trapped. You're not going anywhere. Look at it this way...you like sushi, right? Well, think of it as sushi. Just a more live version."

They still stood there, bodies plastered together and anchored by Rick's arm. They stared at each other, Kate's now wary eyes matching Rick's now bemused ones. It was a total reversal of the situation just a few minutes ago when Kate had the upper hand. So they stood there, their breath mingling.

Using her best 'Detective Beckett' voice, Kate told him, "You are _not_ going to make me kiss that thing. And if you do attempt to force me, I can guarantee you without a doubt that you will live to regret it."

Rick, although still sometimes fearful of that voice, was nevertheless still bemused. However, to keep up the game, he tried to come across like he was considering what she said. "Okaaaaayyyy. Forget it. Really, Beckett, you take all of the fun out of things." He bent back, setting the shell down carefully on the chair again, but keeping his tight hold around her body. She was surprised at his sudden capitulation, but she readied herself to break free as soon as his grasp relaxed a bit, and to get as far away from him and that gooey orange thing as she could, so he couldn't plan something devious to get back at her.

But she was unprepared, mentally and physically, when he leaned in, and, just a fraction of an inch away from her lips, said authoritatively, "Since you like to take the fun out of things, I feel it's up to me to put some of the fun back in. You don't have to kiss Marvin, but you _do_ have to kiss me. Now." And he finished leaning the rest of the way toward her, ending only when his lips met hers in the softest whisper of a kiss.

When she felt his lips on hers, her eyes drifted shut, as did his. She had no time to resist, nor did she really want to resist. Their lips separated after that brief contact, only to be drawn back together again, as if by some invisible force, right away. Rick whispered against her lips "Somtimes the lightest touch is the most powerful, don't you think?", mimicking the words that she had spoken to him just minutes earlier when she was teasing him on the lounge chair. They didn't move at first, just stood there with their lips touching, getting used to the feeling. It was a feeling that was altogether very new to them, but at the same time it felt almost strangely familiar, although distant, like experiencing a cherished childhood memory again as an adult.

Slowly, with his lips still pressed to hers, he began to move them over hers, peppering her own still-shocked lips with soft little kisses from his own. He kissed the one corner of her mouth, and then the other corner. His lips were soft, persuasive. He really didn't know how he maintainted his calm; he could hardly believe that he was actually sharing a kiss with Kate. It was a heady feeling, and one he didn't often let himself even imagine. He reveled in the feeling of the kiss, and that he had her whole body trapped within his arms.

She remained still for a few moments, just experiencing the sensation of the new intimacy with this man who had been her friend, her partner for almost three years. Unconsciously, she began to kiss him back, ever so slowly, even tentatively, just testing the new experience. But all of a sudden, she broke away. Not very far away, but far enough to make his lips seem cold without hers. At the loss of contact, they both opened their eyes and stared at each other, unsmiling. Her eyes were bright, and dark, and serious. On a deep sigh, she told him "Castle, let me go."

At the sound of her words spoken in that deadly serious tone, Rick's stomach felt as if it would fall to his feet. Oh, no, he thought. It had happened, the thing he had been worried about this whole trip, ever since the first time he saw her in the swimsuit. Hell, he had probably been worried about it for probably the better part of two years. He thought she had been with him in wanting this, but apparently he was wrong: he had driven her away. She had let him back in enough times when he'd screwed up; her mother's murder, the summer away. But he'd never crossed a line like this before. He had moved too fast for her, she didn't want any more than a friendship or partnership with him. She didn't want him, at least not that way. He had blown it. And the crushing weight of that began to bear down on his chest, making it hard for him to breathe correctly.

He took a step back, and honoring her request, completely released her. He started to move further away from her and held his hands up as if to surrender. He attempted to explain, so hopefully he could salvage something, anything, of their friendship. "Kate, I'm sorry. I never should have-"

His apology was interrupted by Kate rolling her eyes as she stepped forward to him again. She grabbed his head with her hands and pulled him toward her gently so that his forehead was almost resting against hers. Looking into his eyes, she implored "Rick, please, _please_, for once just _shut up_." And then she leaned forward and locked her lips with his again. As soon as their lips were together again, she took one of her hands from his face and wrapped it around the back of his shoulders to press them together even more.

This time, it was Rick who was standing perfectly still and was wondering what had just happened. He had been so certain that he went to far, too fast for her, and that she wanted to tell him to get lost. He was going to try to fumble his way through some sort of apology but then she...whoa. Kate Beckett had grabbed him, and was now, at this very moment, trying to kiss him senseless as she pressed her sexy swimsuit-clad body against his. Her one hand was caressing his face as her lips were caressing his. He couldn't think. So he didn't even try anymore. He was at her mercy. He had no chance against her; he never did.

After having let go of her when she asked, Rick now reclaimed her with his hands and arms, wrapping one arm around her lower back and using the other hand to massage the back of her neck. This was what he had always only dreamed of with her-bodies flush against each other, his arms around her, mouths locked, breath intermingled-and now he was living it. It was real. Her lips against his...they were a weapon of torture. Exquisite torture. And Kate Beckett certainly knew how to use her weapons.

Eventually their kisses slowed. Breaking away, Kate laid her forehead against his bare shoulder and inhaled his scent, a combination of suntan lotion, aftershave and genuine male. She tried to control her erratic breathing brought on by the kiss. He seemed to be trying to do the same; she could feel his chest moving beneath her forehead and felt his breath in her hair.

Finally, she raised her head and looked up at him. She rested her arms on his hunky shoulders. He looked back at her, a cocky smile tilting the corners of his mouth upwards. Rolling her eyes at him, she laughed and said "I should have known!"

"What?"

"All cocky now, but sure enough, right before that you started to go all weird on me again."

"Huh?" he asked, the confusion showing on his face. "You think I kiss weird? Uh, weird-_ly?_" he corrected.

"No, you don't kiss weirdly. You idiot!" she said, lightly hitting him on the shoulder. "You know, Castle, I'm getting pretty sick of this! Why did you apologize before?"

"Be...cause you...pulled away? And you told me to let you go?"

She rolled her eyes again. "You get in a compromising position with me, a pretty damn _nice_ compromising position if you ask me, and you APOLOGIZE? How did you think that made me feel? For God's said, Rick, you had my arms trapped! I just wanted you to let my arms go!"

"Oh." He looked puzzled. "That was all? Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Why was he still being weird?

"You mean you liked it? You liked the...uh..."

"The _kiss_, Rick?" Kate prompted, getting more agitated at him. At his silent nod, she punched him on the shoulder again. "Geez, Rick, you're being weird again. Of course I liked it; didn't I just say that? If I didn't like it, would I have wanted my arms free so I could do this?" And with that, she grabbed his head again and plastered her lips to his again. Then, forgetting that she was making a point, she got caught up in the kiss, even moreso than before, teasing him with her tongue and nipping at his bottom lip with her teeth.

Rick was lost. And still a little bit confused. But while he was kissing Kate, he couldn't really even think. So he just...kept kissing Kate. And he was really fine with that course of action. Really, really fine.

Kate let out a small moan, which made her realize that she needed air, and she needed a break. This was getting...intense. Somewhat reluctantly, she pulled away. "Are we clear now? Perfectly, crystal clear?" she asked Rick, taking a couple of deep breaths. "I _liked_ it."

Rick couldn't stop the smile. "Got it. And for the record, I did too." A little too much, he added silently. He looked away, toward the beach, and then back at her. "Should we go for another walk down the beach?" At her suspicious look, he added, "Kate, have a little pity on me. I might embarrass myself if we stay here and continue with what we were just doing, much as I might like to. Besides, I think maybe my kissing cousin"-he pointed to the shell still sitting on the chair-"needs a little drink."

At the mention of the shell, Kate exclaimed, "Oh, no! I didn't mean to have him out of the water that long!" She swatted his arm and grabbed the shell, before heading down to the shore, calling over her shoulder, "If he dies, it's your fault for distracting me!"

He watched Kate jog toward the shore, only the very brief back of her swimsuit visible to him, and enjoyed the view. He shook his head with a smile. He could hardly believe it...he had just kissed Kate. And then _she_ had kissed _him_. Twice. He followed her down to the shore, where she had put the conch shell in the water.

"I think it's OK. I set it down and it seemed to bury itself in the sand a little bit."

"Glad to hear it. I don't want to go to jail for invertebrate murder." Rick looked off in the distance as if he was formulating a theory about a case. "The prosecution would probably use the 'love triangle' motive. I kissed the mollusk, then I kissed you..." He snapped his fingers. "Hey, I never gargled before I kissed you!" He reached out and quickly touched her arm. "Mollusk germs, no returns!"

Kate stood up and gave him a withering look. "What are you, seven years old? But thanks for reminding me...not. Ew."

"I didn't see you complaining too much at the time."

"When one is trapped, one often decides it's prudent to not complain but instead to bide one's time and wait to seize the first opportunity for escape that presents itself."

"Yet you didn't escape."

She walked toward him and placed her hands lightly on his chest, walking her fingers up his pecs in a sultry motion. "No, I didn't escape. I was...intrigued. At the time. But now, consider this... escaping!" On the last word, she took her hands, planted them palms-down on his chest and shoved him as hard as she could back in the water. Then she took off running through the waves herself. But she didn't get far, because running in knee-high water was not a very quick endeavor, before Rick tackled her from behind and sent them both rolling in the waves before coming up sputtering.

Once Kate got her bearings, she stood up and glared at Rick. "What the hell was that?"

Rick laughed and smiled slyly at her, still wiping the water from his eyes. "_That _was _fun_, Kate. Lots of _fun_. Besides you started it. Just like with kissing that mollusk. Seems that Detective Beckett can dish it out, but she can't take it."

"_I_ started it? But...well, hell, I guess I did. Fine." She started to walk away, but then she turned back and started to walk back toward Rick, saying "Let's just go for that walk now." But when she got a good look at Rick again, she got alarmed at the look on his face.

Rick's mood was all joking and fun after he tackled Kate and was giving her grief, but then he got a good look at her once the water was out of his eyes. And the breath left his body, and he felt an almost immediate jolt in his groin area as he realized that while he'd seen her in that suit before, he'd never seen her in that suit, _wet_, before. When it was wet, the suit shimmered in the sunlight, and it clung to her body even more, if that was possible. Her rear end, when she turned away from him, was outlined to perfection. He could see every contour. And when she turned around and he got a look at her from the front, her breasts, her nipples...oh, man, it was like she wasn't even wearing a suit anymore. It was as if someone had just painted her body with black paint in the outline of a suit. Then the thought of _him_ painting her body with black paint came unbidden into his mind, and he felt the blood draining away from his brain toward the lower part of his body. Once again, he felt the overwhelming urge to get away from her, before he did something stupid.

Kate watched as the now-unsmiling Rick started backing away from her, muttering something about going to the house. _'He was just fine,' _she thought_, 'but now he's being weird and he's running away again. Again! Wait, forget that crap. He is NOT running away again! Not this time!'_ And she hopped forward in the surf and grabbed his arm, stopping his retreat. The pained look on his face increased at her touch, which of course she noticed, wincing.

"Nuh-uh, Castle. No way. Don't you even THINK about ditching me. I can see you getting weird on me again. How many times is that now? Three, four? You've been throwing sexual innuendo at me for YEARS, and then when you CAN finally do something about it, when I'm beginning to feel a lot more than okay about going there with you, you RUN, like you can't stand the sight of me anymore. What is WITH you? And what is wrong with ME? Am I THAT disgusting? Or was all of the innuendo just a big freaking act from Richard freaking Castle to see how many women he could charm into submission?" By the end of it, she was yelling at him, and her eyes were spitting fire.

Rick was stunned at her outburst, his quick retreat forgotten as he stared at the enraged woman in front of him. She thought...that he thought she was disgusting? It was so preposterous that he would have laughed if he didn't know beyond a doubt that she would probably beat him to a pulp if he did. So he did the only thing he could think of, the only thing that would work with her: give her concrete proof.

He stepped forward, grabbed her hips and jerked her toward him, pressing his pelvis against her abdomen. "Feel that, Kate? That is definitely NOT a pen in my pocket. And I am definitely happy to see you. Ecstatic, in fact. And damn near orgasmic. Because the sight of you in that suit, wet, is anything _but_ disgusting." He moved his right hand from her hip to the back of her head, and crushed his mouth to hers in a frenzied, impatient kiss while he massaged the back of her head and kept her close to him. He plundered her mouth while she raised up to meet him, wrapping her arms around his torso, digging her fingers into his back. She could feel the heat pool in her belly and she lost herself in the feel of his mouth on hers and his hands on her body. Unconsciously, she pressed her hips against him.

Suddenly he broke away, panting, and saw his own raging emotions reflected in her face. He tried to speak right away, lest she make more bad assumptions about his pulling away from her. "Now don't go all 'woman scorned' on me again. I had to pull away or we would probably be very soon in a situation that, while it may be mind-bogglingly pleasurable, I don't think either one of us is ready for yet."

Kate wondered how he could talk after that, and even manage to sound coherent. She didn't know if she could utter much of anything that would make sense, so she just said "Uh huh."

He tried to continue, to explain, while she still seemed too dazed to do anything but listen to him. "Don't for a minute think that I don't want you, that I haven't wanted you. Because I have. Too much. But I value the relationship, the friendship that we've been building these last few years more than I can tell you. Last summer wasn't fun for me, without you. Once you let me come back, I tried really hard to never do anything else to hurt our friendship again. If I can't have anything else with you, from you, then I'll take that. Sure, there was innuendo, but that's easy. Lanie and the other guys are around...everyone does it. But here, with us alone, I couldn't do that."

She thought about that, and then said "Why not?"

"When I pulled you over the couch the other night, I knew something could have happened. And it almost did. And the time at the beach. We would have crossed a line. But I had vowed that I wouldn't do anything to pressure you into more than you wanted from me. So I pulled away when I got tempted into doing something more...intimate. And when you told me to let go of you up by the chairs...I thought you were trying to tell me that I'd went too far and you wanted to go home or something. My worrying kind of ran away with me for a minute. Your voice was so serious and I thought I'd messed up big-time. I'm sorry if you think I didn't want you. That couldn't be further from the truth. I just didn't want to drive you away or make you uncomfortable by making overtures that I didn't think you wanted."

"Why did you bring me here?" she asked suspiciously.

"Not for this, that's for sure. This was more like a fantasy than a concrete plan." He smiled ruefully, and then, realizing what he said, sobered and tried to explain. "No, that didn't come out right. Last summer got messed up. I just wanted to spend time with you and last summer didn't work out. So then I found out it was your birthday, and everything just kind of came together. I really didn't plan much of anything once we got here. Scout's honor," he finished.

She pondered his words. "So you pulled away all those times just to avoid making me potentially uncomfortable? Until I was ready for more, even if that never happened?" He nodded silently. "Rick, that was..." Wow, a guy who waited for her to make the first move even though he would have gladly jumped her bones at any time? How...rare. Wow. "That was really sweet. And you mean that when you got all weird and apologized before, when I asked you to let me go, it was just because you thought I was REALLY telling you I wanted to go, as in for good, so you were apologizing for going too far?"

"Yeah. Kind of freaked me out when you said that."

"Sorry. Rest assured, it was NOT too far." She paused and took a breath. "I just had no idea why you were being so weird and pulling away all of a sudden. It wasn't like Rick Castle, playboy, at all."

"Kate, a large part of the 'Rick Castle, playboy' image is from the media. It isn't really me. I think you know that on some level, or at least I hope you do. All I want to be when I'm down here is your friend. Or maybe a little more, if you still want that?"

Kate pretended to think for a minute. "A little more sounds good. I've been having these odd thoughts, ever since a wave pushed me against a shirtless guy in board shorts, and then I ended up spending the night with him on a couch."

"When I realized where we were, and how we were laying, I thought you were going to kill me. I thought for sure I was a dead man." The look on his face told her that he believed that.

"I suspected that. But I realized when I woke up that it actually felt kind of nice. I didn't expect it, with you, but it did. You're actually a really good cuddler, Castle."

He bowed extravagantly and amusingly pursed his lips at her. "At your service, madam."

"Rick?" she asked, suddenly pensive. At his questioning look, she continued. "A lot has happened in the last hour or two. Uh, between us. And I think we've proven that we don't need much time at all to make a lot more happen. I told you last year that I'm not good with my feelings or with personal stuff. I don't want to screw anything up by going too fast. So could we try to slow things down a bit?"

Rick grinned, relieved at what she said and also that he had read her correctly about not moving fast. "My thoughts exactly, my dear." Then as an afterthought, he added "Kate?".

"Yes, Rick?" she prompted.

"Please do me a favor and never wear that suit in the water again. Or any notions of going slow will be going up in smoke instead, and it might be smoke from me spontaneously combusting. That suit is positively indecent. I do love it, I mean I really, _really_ love it, but I'm still getting used to the idea of seeing you in a swimsuit at all; I just cannot handle that kind of temptation right now."

Kate laughed, feeling empowered that she provided such temptation for him, and strangely, wasn't the least bit hesitant, shy or embarrassed about how indecent he felt the suit was on her, or about wearing it in front of him. She reached out her hand to him. "Ready for that walk down the beach now?"

He took her hand. "Sure, as long as you stay out of the water in that thing."

She smiled. "Deal." Then with a questioning look on her face, she teased "But what about my new red string bikini?"

His mouth gaped open and he looked at her again, before swallowing convulsively. He tapped his head and said "Imagination, remember? You're killing me here, Kate. You're just killing me."

And she threw back her head and laughed, as they walked hand in hand down the beach.

_**

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I hope everyone enjoyed that. It wasn't just the first kiss that everyone has been clamoring for, it was the first, second, third and fourth ones. It's my longest chapter ever but I know there are some of you who really love the long chapters. I just can't do them that long all the time (or you would be waiting forever) but I hope it satisfied everyone's Caskett needs for now.

_**(Now I can to get back to being depressed that there will only be one new Castle episode between now and the beginning of the year.)**_

_**As always, please review. This was my first try at writing anything remotely romantic, so I hope I did it justice.**_

_**I have a few other things still planned for them, but if anyone has anything they'd specifically like to see, PM me. I won't guarantee anything, but fresh ideas are always good.**_


	19. Chapter 19

_**I still continue to be somewhat overwhelmed by the wonderful reviews that I get, so many, many thanks to everyone who takes the time to read the story and review it. I truly do appreciate it!**_

_**This chapter picks up later in the day, after the events of chapter 18. It's pretty much just pure Casketty fluff, but I know a lot of you love that. ;-)**_

_**Disclaimer: I haven't had a disclaimer in a while, so here it is: I do not own Castle or the characters; I just tried to give them a little adventure.**_

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Kate sat on the lounge chair down on the beach, just watching the birds walk around on the beach, looking for little animals, pecking randomly at the sand. It was late in the day, and they had gone back to the house a while ago to shower and change. She had changed into one of the sundresses that they'd gotten that first day and had come out on the beach, while Rick stayed in the house to check his email and 'take care of some boring author stuff', as he had called it. She also put on the shell necklace he'd given her for her birthday; what better place to wear it? She welcomed a little bit of solitude after the day they'd had, a day in which everything had dramatically changed in their relationship. They weren't just friends anymore. They still weren't lovers though, either, although they might have been by now if Rick hadn't shown some restraint. That was another surprising point about today: Rick Castle had shown sexual restraint. She didn't think he had it in him. But after their talk, she was wondering how much he had in him that she didn't know about. The man was definitely surprising her.

She got up and walked down to the edge of the water. She'd left her shoes in the house, but she'd applied a fresh coat of the liquid bandage to the cut on her foot after her shower, so she didn't need to worry about that. She'd just have to watch where she was walking. She loved seeing the beach now, in the lessening light, so different than it seemed during the day. The sunset was going to be another stunning one, with some wisps of clouds adorning the sky, their colors painted into vibrant yellows, oranges, pinks and purples by the setting sun. She walked along the shore, just getting her feet wet, but not going deep enough so that her dress got wet. She wore pants so much at work, and had spent the majority of her time down here in a swimsuit, so the thin gauzy feel of the dress as it blew in the gentle ocean breeze made her feel carefree and feminine.

It hadn't even been a week, she thought, since she'd been here. And things had already changed so much between her and Rick. Even that...he was 'Rick' now more than he was 'Castle'. They'd begun to change even before they stepped off the plane in Florida, she could admit now, as she looked back. They had finally cleared the air and come clean about everything that happened before last summer, and that was a big step. They'd been dancing around it all the time since he came back, but nobody spoke about it. Rick was right...it was the elephant in the room. But now that was behind them. And she was still somewhat awed to know-finally realize-the lengths he had went to for her, to make her comfortable, so things didn't move too fast between them, if they were going to happen at all. She couldn't think of another single, unattached man who would bring a single, unattached woman to a romantic beach getaway without expecting something in return. But he didn't; in fact, he went in the other direction, denying any impulses he may have had, to the point where she wondered what was wrong, because he definitely wasn't one to deny his impulses. At all. It was really sweet, just like she'd told him when they talked earlier. But it went beyond just sweet, somehow. It was special, and he'd done it for her. It humbled her to realize that.

Where did they go from here? If she thought about it, really thought about it, the idea of calling him 'honey' or putting her arms around him or kissing him-those romantic couple type of things-still seemed foreign to some extent. Yet she had done that. Well, she hadn't called him 'honey', but she had put her arms around him and she had certainly kissed him. And he had kissed her. Boy, had they kissed! And she knew she wanted to do more of that. But what about when they got back home? They couldn't stay here forever. She couldn't really imagine him giving her a kiss for good luck before she broke down the door of a suspect's run-down apartment, her gun at the ready. PDAs were a no-no. She had no answers right now, but somehow, she hoped they would materialize soon.

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When Rick was done with his phone calls and went out on the deck to get things ready, he was surprised that Kate wasn't there. He thought he'd find her on the deck, standing by the railing, because he knew she liked to watch the sunset. But the deck was empty. Walking over to the edge of the rail, he saw the solitary form further down on the beach, her sundress billowing in the wind. After finishing, he meandered down to the beach. Walking toward her, he was struck by the beauty of the scene, the woman in the bright yellow dress, her chestnut hair flowing in the breeze, the beautiful colors of the setting sun a perfect backdrop to showcase her solitary presence on the beach. He couldn't resist; he got out his phone and took several shots of her with the camera. He put the phone back in his pocket and walked toward her slowly.

Kate sensed his presence moments before she felt his hands on her upper arms. Rick had wanted to walk up and just put his arms around her, take advantage of the progress they'd made, the newfound closeness they'd gained on the beach today. But he still held back a bit, not quite trusting that all of that really happened or wouldn't just disappear with the light of the day. Or that she was even ready for instant displays of closeness, even it if was just the two of them. He rubbed her arms a bit, and moved to stand right behind her. But right away, she leaned back into his chest and he took that as an invitation to wrap his arms around her, as he'd wanted to do from the moment he started walking toward her. She brought her hands up to hold onto his forearms, and they stood, together, and watched the setting sun as their bare feet sunk into the soft sand.

As the last part of the fiery orange ball sunk below the horizon, she leaned her head back onto his shoulder and closed her eyes, sighing contentedly. He kissed her neck, and she shivered and squeezed his arms. "That tickled," she said by way of explaining her shiver.

"I didn't know you were ticklish, Detective," he said, and even though she couldn't see it, she knew that the cocky grin was forming on his lips. "Care to tell me where else you might be ticklish, or should I just launch my own full-scale investigation into the matter? I have many resources and very...unique...investigative tools at my disposal, you know."

"I'll just bet you do. But not on your life, writer boy. A lady has to have some secrets."

"And I'll consider it my duty to find out what they are." She could still feel the whisper of his warm breath as he spoke against her neck, and she was trying to remain still and not give into the urge to shiver and burrow deeper into his arms. He got to her, but she didn't want him to know quite how much he got to her. She didn't want to send the Castle ego into a full-blown flare-up.

"You're wearing the necklace," Rick observed.

"Told you I would. It really is beautiful, and it looks nice with the dress."

"It looks wonderful because it's on _you_." He hoped he didn't sound too sappy; he knew she got uncomfortable when he said things like that.

Deciding to leave that one alone, she changed the subject and asked "So what culinary delicacy do you have planned for me tonight? More mac and cheese? Or pizza, perhaps?"

Somewhat reluctantly, he unwrapped his arms from her and turned her around, instead grabbing her hand to maintain some contact with her. He attempted to defend his previous meal choices as he started to walk with her back to the house. "Hey, don't knock it. Those items are dietary staples for many of this country's future leaders. Who are we to scoff at them? Wait a minute...you're the one scoffing at them. So who are _you_ to scoff at them? Really, Detective, did you never eat mac and cheese and and pizza as a kid?"

"Sure I did. When I was a KID!" she laughed.

"Spoilsport," he pouted.

"Nine year old," she threw back.

After he pouted a little more, he said "So you really don't want pizza?"

"Not really."

"Hey! How about good ol' PB&J? Carbs, protein, fruit..."

"Don't even think about it."

"So then I guess ma-"

She cut him off. "No, Rick."

"Are you sure you-"

"No."

"But-"

She stopped abruptly, and turning toward him, let go of his hand and grabbed his shoulders. "Castle, shut up about it now or I'll give you a reason to use your safe word, and it won't be pretty."

He stared at her for a moment, blinked once, and then said simply, "OK."

She patted his cheek. "Good boy." And she turned and walked up the stairs to the deck, where she found wisps of smoke coming out of the grill along with a mouth-watering aroma. She opened the cover and saw two delicious looking steak and vegetable kabobs. She lowered the grill cover, turned slowly around and saw Rick leaning against the railing at the top of the stairs, a small grin on his face. He gave her a small shrug. She looked at the sky, shook her head and walked into the house.

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She pointed a piece of steak toward him on her fork and told him "This marinade is really good. I need the recipe for it when we get home." She popped the piece of steak in her mouth. "An' it dushun taysh annishin like mac n sheesh, tank God," she said with the steak still in her mouth.

The sat outside at the table by the pool to eat their dinner, enjoying the balmy night air. The kabobs were seasoned and grilled to perfection. Rick had put the kabobs on the grill before going down to the beach with her, and he couldn't resist baiting her when she had brought up the topic of dinner. He loved the look on her face when she turned around to look at him after opening the grill. She knew he'd won that round.

He, of all people, had no problem deciphering what she'd said with her mouth full, so he just replied "You know, Beckett, you really need to get in touch with your inner child. I mean, this is great, but sometimes you just need comfort food."

"That's what chocolate is for. And ice cream."

"I won't disagree with those, but sometimes you need warm comfort food."

"Then for me, that would be mashed potatoes."

"Mashed potatoes, huh?"

"Uh-huh. Since I was a kid."

Rick just nodded, filing that away for future reference. He noticed that they were pretty much done, and started taking their plates into the kitchen. She took her last bite and did the same. They did the dishes together, and Rick commented on how utterly domestic they were being. Kate didn't say anything, making Rick wonder what she was thinking. But then, as if to make light of his observation, she did finally comment "Sure, Rick. We're just imitating a normal day in suburbia, doing the dishes after dinner. Never mind that you're some famous gazillionnaire, you kind of, uh, kidnapped me, and we're staying in a freaking mansion. How utterly normal," she finished, rolling her eyes.

"Hey, I never said it was normal, I just said we were being domestic. The word 'domestic' is from the latin word 'domus', meaning 'house'. Although yes, the house is freakishly large, this IS, nonetheless, a house. And we are doing a household chore, which is not affected in the least by the size of my bank account. Therefore, we are being domestic."

She gave him a withering look as if to say 'oh, brother' while he grinned at her, as if daring her to say or give him grief about anything else. Then he threw down his dishtowel and told her to go get her shoes on, because they were going out.

"Where?" she asked, somewhat worried because he had that can-hardly-sit-still excited nine year old look about him again.

"You'll love it! This place is just so cool!" Leaning in close, he asked in a deep voice, "Have I ever led you astray?"

"Yes. You led me to Florida."

But Kate got her shoes, and Rick drove her, with the top of the convertible down, to a little shop a few blocks away from the beach. It was lucky they had outdoor seating, because the place was packed to overflowing. Before he got out of the car, he put on his baseball cap to go with another loud Hawaiian shirt that he'd changed into before they left the house, still in disguise mode when he was out with her. As he parked the car, she looked at the sign on the building and laughed. "'Scooper Dooper'?" she read. "Ice cream, I take it? So just because I said I thought of ice cream as a comfort food, you decided to get me some?"

"I'd love to say yes, but your 'comfort food' declaration was just a coincidental bonus. I'd planned to bring you here anyway. And you're right, it's ice cream, but it's better than that. Wait till you see!"

They went inside, eventually, because they had to wait in line for a while, and the line stretched out the door. It was a popular place. As they waited, Kate could see adults and children carrying various ice cream concoctions to tables outside and inside the store. Rick explained that they have different flavors of ice cream, and then you go through a 'topping buffet' where you can get whatever you want on top, in any amount. The price was calculated by total weight. There were 'recipes' that you could use to make a sundae of a certain flavor, or you could just wing it.

"You just go find a table and I'll get us something."

Kate's eyes flitted back and forth between Castle and the extensive topping bar. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea," she answered slowly.

"What? You don't trust me?"

"Uhh...no. Think about it, Rick: you, ice cream, unlimited toppings. No."

"Spoilsport. Don't worry, I won't go overboard. Now go!" he said, gently pushing her to the seating area. "Off with you, woman!"

She threw a suspicious glance back at him, but realized that she'd have to scout for a table while he was in line if they wanted to have any hope of sitting down anywhere. That place was _that_ busy. She pointed her finger at him and said "Mississippi Mud," indicating the 'recipe' that she wanted him to prepare for her. He put his thumb and forefinger together, the A-OK sign, indicating to her that he understood, as she walked away.

She eventually found a table outside, and Rick found her soon after, a smile adorning his face as he found her. He set the...'platter' was the best way she could describe it...on the small table in front of them. "I thought we could share," he explained. "You know, kind of like high school sweethearts who order one milkshake with two straws, and spend their whole date gazing into each others eyes and sipping their shake."

Kate hardly heard him. She was staring open mouthed at the spectacle on the table before her. "Rick, what is this?"

"Uh...ice cream? With stuff on it?"

"It looks like Ben and Jerry and Willy Wonka mated and then threw up on that...platter. What the _hell_ is all that?"

He pointed to a small mountain on the platter, which looked to possibly be a scoop of ice cream entirely covered by the aforementioned 'stuff'. "This is good stuff, Beckett. This one is your Mississippi Mud." He pointed to another mound. "This one was called Oreo Explosion...Oreo ice cream, hot fudge, chocolate chips and oreos on top and whipped cream. This one is Strawberry Cheesecake, and this one is..." he continued on, giving the name of each recipe. He got to the last of the seven mounds of ice cream, explaining that the last one didn't really have an official name; it was just a bunch of stuff that he hadn't used yet.

"Rick, SEVEN scoops of ice cream? Plus all of the other stuff? Did you use everything up there? Is there any left?" She pointed her finger back and forth between them. "We're only two people!"

"Then I guess we'd better get started. Don't want it to melt." he took a big scoop of one of the mounds and popped it in his mouth, leaving whipped cream on his upper lip. She grabbed a napkin and wiped it off for him. He smiled and said "Thanks. And no I didn't use _everything_ up there. I didn't try any jalapenos or bacon bits." He popped another bite in his mouth.

Kate made a face. "Ew. Thank goodness you have _some_restraint." She picked up her spoon and took a bite of her Mississippi Mud mountain. After she tasted it, she said "Mmmm!" and quickly took another bite.

They ate their ice cream in companionable silence for a while, broken up only when Rick or Kate would take a small scoop of something and feed the other one with a "Here, try this..." command. As Kate got full, she started testing Rick, telling him to close his eyes while she fed him a spoonful, and he had to guess what it was. Rick gave wild guesses, that had Kate alternately rolling her eyes or laughing at the most outlandish ones. By the time neither could eat anymore, they were sitting with their elbows propped on the edges of the small table, leaning toward each other with their faces close, mostly just feeding the other person (actually, it was almost exclusively Kate feeding Rick; she reached her ice cream limit long before he did.) It was basically a re-enactment of the 'high-school-sweethearts-with-a-milkshake' scenario that Rick had described earlier, only this was the ice cream sundae version. To anyone around them, they looked like newlyweds.

When they were almost done, Rick noticed a small bit of hot fudge on the corner of Kate's mouth. Putting a finger under her chin, he leaned toward her while she gravitated toward him a bit. He bent close to her face, and reached out with the tip of his tongue to lick it off. "Hot fudge. Mmmm..." he said softly, looking into her eyes. Then he replaced his tongue with his lips, and gave her a soft kiss. He pulled back and she could see the heat in his eyes, despite all of the cold ice cream they'd just eaten.

The man was masterful with the simplest of things. One small kiss, a heated look, and she had the urge for more of them. Still, they were in public, and she couldn't just fall apart from one little kiss. So she said "At least I used a napkin to clean your face."

He smiled one of his disarming smiles. "Yes, but my way was much more pleasurable. Don't you think?"

Kate could only nod.

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They drove back to the house, remarking on the quietness of the town because of the nighttime hour. Kate and Rick walked into the house and after each getting a glass of ice water and kicking off their shoes, plopped down on the couch, side by side. Rick groaned, "I don't feel so good. I think I ate too much."

"No shit, Sherlock" she said, patting his now distended stomach, which elicited a groan from him.

He grabbed the remote. "I think one of the 'Back to the Future' DVDs is still in the player. I don't think I can move, so unless you want to get up and change it, we're watching that one." He yawned loudly.

"Fine by me."

"Come here," he said, slightly adjusting his position and raising his arm so that she could slide underneath it, resting her head on the upper part of his chest by his shoulder. She turned toward him a little bit more, and curved her leg over his a bit as she melted against him.

"Rick?" Kate asked, with a sleepy timbre to her voice.

"Huh?"

"You still make a good pillow."

"Thanks," he replied, and then asked "Kate?"

"Hmmm?"

"I'm just going to take a little nap, if that's OK."

"Sounds good to me. I may join you," she yawned. "Can I still use you as a pillow?"

"Of course. You can always use me as your pillow...just say the word."

Kate smiled sleepily, but then raised her head and looked at Rick. "Hey, Castle?"

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She gave him a brief, dreamy smile before she reached around to the back of his head and gently pulled his lips to hers for a sweet, lingering kiss. "Goodnight," she said, laying her head back down on his shoulder and resting her hand on his chest.

Even in his sleepy state, he felt touched by her simple goodnight kiss. He had a funny feeling in his belly, one that had nothing to do with the jolt of lust he often felt when he looked at her, or even the extreme amounts of ice cream he had earlier. It was an odd little kick that he'd never felt before. He smiled back at her contently, even though he knew she couldn't see him, and he reached down and kissed the top of her head before whispering "Sweet dreams."

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I hope you all enjoyed the chapter. I'd love to hear what you think.

_**Author's note for tone: Although I've used it before, I wanted to use it again; that is, the tone from the line in the opening credits where he says "Do I look like a killer to you?" So, imagine if you will, the line in the ice cream parlor where he says "Have I ever led you astray?" and she replied "Yes. You led me to Florida." should be 'said' in the same tone as those two lines in the opening credits. As I was writing those lines, I could so imagine them being said like that.**_

_**I was worried that I had gotten a bit out of character with the characters/dialog as I'd gone on with the story (guess it's the result of no new shows lately), so I watched some older episodes to try to get some of that character feel back, with the banter and dialog. Not necessarily the romantic stuff, because there is no prototype for that on the show yet, but the other, normal type of banter. I hope I succeeded, but please let me know if you don't think I did. **_

_**One last thing: I have a couple of ideas brewing in my head for the next chapter. So if you want you can vote for what you'd like to see first: reptiles or water.**_


	20. Chapter 20

_**First, a big thanks to all those who reviewed and voted for reptiles or water after chapter 19. I know what everyone ultimately wants to see happen with this story (and we'll get there, eventually...), but if you have any other requests, just let me know.**_

_**I had an absolute blast writing this chapter, and I truly hope all of you have fun reading it.**_

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They woke when the light was just starting to get bright. Rick woke first to find that he had slid down on the couch so he was just about laying flat, except for the pillow under his head. At first he thought he had a very warm, heavy blanket on him, but then he realized that it was a Beckett blanket; she was sprawled over his chest, with her feet on his left side but her head resting by his right shoulder, under his chin. But-oh, man-her dress that she'd worn the night before was hiked up and bunched around her hips, and one of his hands had found it's way underneath the hem during the night. He closed his eyes and tried to take a deep, calming breath without disturbing Kate. Where had his unconscious mind been? But even thinking that, he knew the answer-his unconscious mind had been in the same place that his conscious mind had gone to many times in his little Beckett fantasy world.

He tentatively moved his hand to discover exactly where it was, and he figured out that his fingers were touching some creamy skin on her lower back, and he could feel that the lower part of his hand was in contact with something that felt lacy covering her bottom. Oh, man.

He thought back to yesterday morning, when he had awoken alone in the guest room. He wasn't prepared for this...less than 24 hours later, he and Kate were waking up together, and he had his hand up her dress. Now, granted, they had taken a step forward in their relationship yesterday; a big step, considering how long they had known each other but hadn't yet reached that point. And it wasn't that he didn't like it. But his brain was still in the mode of not wanting to move too fast. Although if he asked his body...well, that bell would have been rung yesterday in the ocean when he saw her in the wet swimsuit. And it probably would have been ringing very, very loudly.

The tiny movement of his hand was enough to have her stirring. She blinked open her eyes, and saw a strong jaw with stubble on it. She put a hand over her mouth and yawned as she raised up on his chest. Her brow wrinkled together as she looked at him and asked "Castle, where is your hand?"

Oh, shit, he thought. But he knew one major rule to follow when dealing with Kate-never lie. So he prepared himself to try to dodge her question, if possible, and said in a small voice "On your back?"

"In relation to my dress?" Dang, so much for dodging the question.

"Uh...up under your dress."

"And you think that's a good idea?"

"Well, I think my hand thinks it's a good idea or at least it did when it crawled under there last night. My hand-it does that sometimes. I have no control over it. It just does things randomly and I can't stop it. I hope you can forgive it."

"So you're saying that it's not responsible for what it does? Kind of like an insanity defense?"

"Exactly."

She paused to consider her next words, and Rick was still worried. Until she smiled and leaned close to his lips. "I guess we'll have to get it some counseling then. But until you can reign it in, let's just enjoy its rebel ways, huh?" She raised her eyebrows at him suggestively, and then leaned in for a kiss. "Good Morning."

"It's a very good morning, indeed," he replied as she bent her head down for another kiss. The kiss started out leisurely, a sleepy good morning kiss between two people who were still discovering each other in this new light. But as his errant, rebellious hand cautiously began to obey her suggestion, moving lightly over her back and then bravely down to cup her derriere through the lace panties, she let out a sexy sigh and moved so she was laying just a little more on top of him. The kiss continued, the tentative touches of lips giving way to longer, more open-mouthed kisses with breathy sighs in between. Her one hand dipped under his shirt to find the bare skin of his side, while her other hand wound its fingers through his hair. He cupped the back of her neck with his free hand, and the kiss grew deeper, more urgent. It was now a dance of battling tongues and nipping teeth. She moved again as she was laying over him, not able to keep herself still, and he unconsciously grabbed her bottom to press her hipbone against the erection that had been growing since she gave her first morning kiss to him. She broke away then, and gazed at him with stormy, dark eyes.

"_God_, Rick," she choked out, as if amazed at the fire between them and how quickly it had ignited. Then she dove back into the interno and glued her lips to his again. Rick's head was pounding with the intensity.

As he pulled Kate more tightly against him, the pounding increased until it was followed by a crash. Belatedly, Rick realized that the pounding wasn't really in his head at all-someone had been pounding on the door to the deck, and had finally opened it with a crash as he burst into the room. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, as their heads stopped in mid-kiss and Kate's head whipped around to assess the noise. They could hear their twin exclamations of 'what the hell?' as the intruder grabbed onto the chair near the door and looked around, his angry eyes finding Kate laying on top of Rick in a compromising position, leaving no doubt as to what they had been up to. He locked his gaze on Kate and spat out at her "You lyin' little whore!"

Kate automatically went into the defense mode she had from years of training and working to catch the criminal element on the streets of New York. She pushed herself off of Rick and stood up. "Sir," she said in her best authoritative voice, "this is a private residence. Please leave right now."

The man was having none of it. Dressed in a wrinkled tank top and shorts, he was in his early to mid 20s, barefoot, and even despite the eight to ten feet that separated them, both Kate and Rick could smell the stench of alcohol emanating from him. He was drunk. But he was also about 6' 5" and was built like an offensive lineman for a pro football team. He advanced a step around the chair and menacingly pointed a finger at her as Rick sprang up to stand beside Kate. The man snarled at them, his eyes never leaving Kate's. He surveyed her disheveled hair and her rumpled dress with distaste. "I durn well know this here is a private res-ee-dence. Looky at you, Ginny, callin' me 'sir' right after youse been humpin' on top o' that old geezer there. Tryin' to be all high an' mighty perfect when youse just a whore an' a cheater through an' through."

Rick started sputtering at the 'geezer' comment and tried to be indignant, but Kate just elbowed him and hissed "shut up!" under her breath at him.

"Yeah, Ginny, you tell the ol' geezer to shut the fuck up! Looky at him! He's so puny! What's he got that ol' Billy here don' got?" he asked, thumping his chest like a caveman. "His tallywhacker is prob'ly punier 'n my little finger. An' he prob'ly don' know how to use it for nothin' good anyway. Hell, he's prob'ly so old it's all done shriveled up already. Ain' no way he could satisfy you, darlin'. You need a _man_, Ginny, not some ol' piece o' horse shit like him. He prob'ly even still lives wit' his momma, an' she's prob'ly older 'n sin too!"

If not for Rick's reaction, Kate would have easily thought this was another Bieber-type of joke that he was playing on her. As Billy went on disparaging Castle's character and manhood, Rick got redder and redder as he tried to keep his cool and keep his mouth shut. Obviously, he wasn't succeeding at either, because every time Billy would say something, Rick would hold up his finger and point at him, starting to say something but never able to finish because Billy was on a roll. So all Rick got out was a chorus of "I...hey, you can't...wait a...I...but..."

It was such a surreal experience, having this person barge into their house and start insulting them. So far he hadn't done anything truly threatening, but she didn't want it to turn into a bad situation. Rick practically had smoke coming out of his ears, so she knew he wouldn't be of any help. So finally, on a hunch that she hoped was right, she stepped forward toward Billy and grabbed him by his massive upper arms. "Billy!" she shouted at him.

He blinked at her. "Yeah, Ginny?"

"I'm not Ginny. Look at me, Billy; do I really look like Ginny?"

He leaned forward and squinted at her, and though she wanted to gag because of the overpowering fumes of cheap beer and who-knows-what-else, she held her ground and let him run a finger over her face. He was kind of listing to one side, so even though she didn't want to stay that close to him, she kept hold of his arms so that he wouldn't fall over and smash into something.

"You're not Ginny," he finally told her, his voice sounding incredulous.

"No, Billy, I'm not. I'm Kate, and the old geezer there is Rick." Rick held up a finger again, and opened his mouth to say something, pursed his lips, opened his mouth again,but then thought better of saying something and ended up closing his mouth again.

"I'm pleased to meet you, ma'am," he said, somewhat automatically, telling her that some manners had been drilled into him at some point in his life. "Is Ginny here?" he asked then, obviously very confused and still very drunk. Kate urged him over to the couch, where he sat down.

"No, this is our house. Do you live here on the island, Billy? Or where are you staying?"

"Uh, in a house. It's down the beach." He looked around. "Hey, this ain' my house! What in the blue tarnation am I doin' here?"

Rick sat down next to Billy. "Well, you busted in here," he pointed over and indicated the door to the deck, "and then you thought Kate was your Ginny and that she was cheating on you with me. 'The ol' geezer'," he mimicked with a sour look on his face.

"I'm mighty sorry, Mr...Dick, I guess I thought I was at my place. I saw the stairs from the beach an' thought it was my place, an' then I looked in the door an' saw y'all...uh" Billy replied, obviously remembering what he'd broken in on.

"Yeah, uh, I remember." Rick sneaked a glance at Kate, who looked away. "And it's Rick, with an 'R'. I'm not so sure I want to know, but what happened to you and Ginny?"

Billy let out a long, dramatic sigh. "See, I won this trip. They was havin' a contest at the food store, and Ginny-she's my girlfriend-she put my name in. So I won it, and she said I need to bring her because she put my name in, ya know? So's we get down here and we're havin' a real good time...man, she got this little red bikini and"-he leans close to Rick, like they're just talking man-to-man-"she looks _really_ good in it, ya know? My Ginny, she's hot. I mean, I can hardly keep my hands off of her when she's wearin' that thing an' then she ain't wearin' it for long-" Billy nudges Rick, who knows all too well about the trauma wreaked on a man's urges by a sexy swimsuit. Rick starts to agree with Billy, but then glances at Kate, who rolls her eyes but then makes a 'get on with it' gesture at them.

Rick gently draws Billy back to his story. "So why do you think she's cheating on you?"

Billy's face, just animated at the thought of Ginny in the bikini, fell at the mention of his romantic woes. "So we're havin' a good time an' all, an' I'm thinkin' I'm gonna give her a ring, ya know? We's been datin' for a long time, like since last fall, so I figgur it's time. What better place ta pop the question, ya know? Women like that sorta stuff. An' then we go out to this bar where they got music 'n stuff. So I go take a piss an' when I come back I see her makin' eyes at the guy in the band. An' she has her hand on his arm and she's leanin' up all close to him. And they's laughin' and all that. An' then he puts his hand on her arm an' they go in the back of the stage an' I can't believe it! All I did was go take a piss, and she just starts in with this other guy! Man, I was only gone like a coupla minutes, ya know?" He hung his head and looked dejected.

"So what happened then?"

Billy looked up, confusion on his face. "I left. I went 'n got some beer and a coupla bottles of somethin' else. An' I went 'n sat on the beach. Ya think I'm gonna just sit around and watch her climbin' on some other guy? No way. Billy don' share." Then to everyone's surprise and dismay, he started crying, howling about his Ginny and how she's the only one for him. Kate left Rick patting Billy's back while she went to start some coffee. His drunken blubbering continued for several minutes, and then she could hear Rick and Billy start to talk. When the coffee was done, she took him a cup.

"Much obliged, ma'am." he said as he started drinking it.

Kate left the men to drink their coffee and she went to shower and change. When she came down, she found Billy passed out on the couch, despite the caffeine in the coffee. He was snoring so loudly she wondered if it was really a distress call that he was sending out so his Ginny could follow the sound to find him.

She hooked her thumb toward Billy, and asked in a soft voice "What's with him?"

"Aside from the fact that he can't seem to pronounce the 'R' sound in relation to my name? Well, he was in the middle of lamenting about Ginny's beauty, which led to a litany of Ginny's feminine assets, in great detail-which was surprisingly uncomfortable to listen to, I'll have you know-and then he just leaned back on the couch, closed his eyes, and started snoring. If that's what that sound is. Man, he could get a job as a evacuation alarm with that decibal range. And it's through his nose!" Rick bent down to look up Billy's nose, as if he was looking for an amplifier or something to explain the loudness.

Rick went to shower while Kate popped some toast in the toaster. She tried to drown out Billy's snoring by listening to some music with her noise canceling headphones, but apparently the sound emating from Billy could not be considered noise, because it was far from canceled. She gave up and went outside, where at least she could have the waves and the barrier of the house to drown out some of the sound. At that point she found a pair of strange shoes on the deck, presumably Billy's, along with an almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels. Well, now she knew what his poison of choice was. At least one of them.

After Rick showered and they managed to rouse Billy and fed him some dry toast, they got in the Mustang and drove him around. His brain was clearing, but since he had been walking and drinking all night, he had no idea where he was. Finally they found his house, which was a little bungalow set on a road which led to the beach. Kate and Rick looked at each other in amusement, wondering how in the world he thought, even in a drunken stupor, that their house resembled his.

As Rick cut the engine in front of the house, a buxom girl with long dark hair came flying out of the house. "Billy Billy Billy Billy Billyyyyyyy!" she screeched as she launched herself toward him. Poor Billy; he had no choice but to catch her or be flattened by her. He caught her.

Rick narrowed his eyes at the girl, trying to find some resemblance between her and Kate, to the point that Billy could mistake Kate for Ginny. Aside from the dark hair, he really couldn't find any. Ginny was short and curvy, whereas Kate was tall and slender. He just concluded that Billy had been really drunk. With badly impaired vision.

Kate and Rick watched the drama of the reunion. "Billy! Where you been? What you been doin'? And why'd you jus' up an' leave me in that bar las' night? You had the keys, ya stupid shit, an' I had ta walk back here! I was just wonderin' if I needed to call CSI to look for you or somethin'."

Kate realized that these two could go on all day. She motioned to Rick to follow her. She walked up in front of the sputtering Ginny. "Come on, we're going inside."

"Who're you two?" Ginny asked.

Billy supplied the answer, talking for the first time since they pulled up to the house. "She's Kate and he's Dick."

"Rick!" both Kate and Rick said simultaneously.

After they went inside, Kate made everyone sit. Ginny pouted and put up some fuss at being ordered around by Kate, but Rick just looked at her and said in a stage whisper "She's a New York City homicide cop. She can take you apart and put you back together again in more ways than you can imagine. So I'd just sit down and listen." Ginny cast a wary glance at Kate and slunk back into the chair.

"We're going to get this taken care of quickly, and everyone's going to talk. Nicely. Got it?" Billy and Ginny both nodded. "Ginny, Billy broke into our house this morning and started..." she tried not to think of exactly what Billy had said to Rick because she knew she would start laughing. Now that she could think back on what he said, it was kind of funny. No, it was absolutely hilarious! But that was for later. She took a moment to compose her thoughts. "...he started yelling at us because he thought I was you and you were cheating on him with Rick."

Ginny, who Kate was sure couldn't even legally be in a bar yet, glanced over at Rick and her eyes got big. "HIM? Oh, my _gawd_! He's OLD! What would I want with him?"

Rick did a slight imitation of what he'd done back at the house, holding up a finger and doing the fish imitation where he opened and closed his mouth and pursed his lips, before finally deciding that it would be better to keep quiet after all.

Kate tried to come to Rick's rescue a little bit, so she said "He's not _that_ old." Rick gave her a semi-grateful little smile. "But that's beside the point. Billy thought you were cheating on him with some guy from a band. And he was drunk and wandering around all night, and he started dreaming up a lot of weird stuff, so when he saw me and Rick, after he saw you with some other guy earlier, he went a little nuts. So, let's cut to the chase. Ginny, Billy needs to know...did you come down here with him and then go..." she tried to find a word.

"Boink," Rick supplied, getting a strange kind of deja vu from the conversation after the Hans incident. Kate shot him a 'shut up' kind of look, and he held up both hands and leaned back in the chair.

She continued "Did you go off with the guy from the band last night?"

Ginny looked at Billy with her mouth open. "You mean the guy I was talkin' to when you went to take a leak? Right before you disappeared?" Billy nodded and she thunked him on the top of his head. "My _gawd_, Billy, that guy was about as old as Dick here!"

"Why don't you guys just call me Richard?" Rick suggested. They ignored him.

"I was just talking to that band guy about playing some sort of romantic song, so we could get all snuggly while we was dancin'. An' he had all this really old stuff that I didn't know, so we went to look at some of his CDs and then I never saw you again."

"But you was all over him and he was touchin' you an'...an'..."

"I was jus' tryin' to shimmy up to him so he would play us some songs. Ya know, like I did when my landlord didn't want to give me back all o' my security deposit. Momma always said you can catch more flies with honey. An' sugar, you know I got lots of honey..." she finished as she trailed her scarlet-tipped finger down his chest toward his pants. Rick looked over at Kate, who was rolling her eyes.

"I don' like you shimmyin' up to no guy but me," Billy pouted.

Ginny changed tactics and thunked him on the head again. "I swear, Billy Jessup, you are just so dense sometimes. Didja ever think of, oh, maybe just _talkin' _ta me, instead o' just runnin' away? I mean, if ya don' like somethin' I do, then how's I sposedta know it if ya just run away like a chicken and don' say nothin'?"

Kate and Rick looked at each other and, satisfied that Billy and Ginny wouldn't be killing each other, nodded in an 'our-work-here-is-done' type of agreement. By mutual unspoken decision they got up and let themselves out. They waved at Ginny and Billy, but the younger couple was so engrossed in their conversation that they hardly acknowledged that Kate and Rick were leaving. Once they were outside, Rick said, "Is it me, or was that last comment that she made about talking just a little too freaky woo-woo, considering the conversation we had on the plane down here?"

Kate pondered a moment. "I guess it's safe to say that we didn't corner the market on communication issues?" He nodded. "And I guess there's probably still some stuff that needs to be talked about, huh?" He nodded again. "But we have another week, right?"

"More, if you take all of the time the Captain gave you."

"Good, then we have time. But right now...I'm kind of hungry. The saga of Billy and Ginny was quite something. Now I need some sustenance. It's still early for lunch, but we can drive for a while and grab something early before the lunch crowds."

Much to Kate's amazement, Rick handed her the keys to the car. "Here. You drive." Then he got into the passenger side of the car.

Kate reached over and laid a hand on his forehead. "Are you feeling OK?"

"Fine for an old geezer, I suppose." Rick said dejectedly, showing her the best pair of sad puppy-dog eyes she'd seen in a while. However, she was, after knowing him for several years, quite immune to most of his pouts. Besides, now that they were done with Billy and Ginny, she really needed to stop to savor all of the things Billy had spewed at him, the things that had Castle sputtering in outrage, so she could take great pleasure in reminding him.

She patted his shoulder in a sympathetic gesture. "Oh, poor, poor..._Dick_," she consoled, as he shot her a look through narrowed eyes. "Funny, funny, ha ha, Beckett."

"Really, you have to admit that whole thing was kind of funny. Some of the things he said..." she trailed off, trying to keep the laughter out of her voice as she started driving.

"Easy for you to say. You weren't the one who had your tallywhacker maligned. Smaller than his little finger...shriveled up...the nerve of him," he finished, mumbling.

"No, since I don't even have a 'tallywhacker'...God, I can't even say that without laughing."

"And I, personally, am quite glad that you do not have a tallywhacker, Detective. That would be...creepy, considering what we've been doing off and on for the last 24 hours. This bird doesn't fly in that direction."

"Good to know, Castle."

They drove in silence for a while, Kate smiling almost the whole time as she recalled what Billy had said, chuckling sometimes when she remembered the look on Rick's face. Of course, when he heard her chuckling, Rick shot glaring looks at her. Finally, he said 'How long are you going to keep this up?"

"I could really go somewhere with that comment, but since I don't think you meant yourself, specifically parts south of the border," Kate paused ever so slightly as Rick's mouth fell open a bit as he realized the double entendre that he had just walked into. "I'll assume you meant my amusement at Billy and Ginny's obvious obliviousness to your rugged good looks. And the answer is...I don't really know. I can tell you that I'm enjoying it immensely right now."

"They said I was old," he pouted.

"Well, to be honest, Rrrrrrick," she said, drawing out the R sound in his name for his benefit, "Ginny doesn't look that much older than Alexis. So to her-and Billy, who obviously saw you as competition for his true-love-of-the-month, you _are_ old."

Rick slunk lower in the seat and resumed his pout.

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She drove them to the burger and ice cream stand that she had seen when they went biking on Sanibel, because she figured that nothing would work faster at snapping him out of his mood than that. He did still pout mildly when Kate wouldn't let him eat a sundae first, but he perked up when she let him have a chocolate malt with his burger. Really, she didn't even know how he could stand to even look at a sundae after the monstrosity of a sundae that he'd had just the night before.

After eating, Rick stole the keys back from her and told her, "Come on, there's somewhere I want to take you."

"Should I be worried?"

"With me? OK, don't answer that. There's a complex down here, and someone from my publishing circles was telling me about it. Private path to the beach, pool, tennis courts, other amenities. Best of all, it's gated, private and exclusive. Good investment and nice to have if we...if anyone wants to come here and the house isn't available. So I thought we'd go check it out."

"What time is the appointment? I'm assuming you have to be taken through on a specialized tour, so they can suck up to you and sufficiently stroke your ego, right?"

"Welllll..." he started, and Kate immediately began to get worried.

"Castle, what are you up to?"

"OK, I don't want the sales types sucking up to me. I don't even want a tour. I just want to look around. If I tell them that I'm coming, then someone could recognize me, right?" She nodded. "So the guy I know, he told me how to get in the back way. We can sneak in from the beach, look around, and leave the same way. We can't get inside the units, but who cares? They'd be fine anyway. I want to see the amenities. The hot tub. See if the patios are secure enough to allow nude sunbathing..." he finished, waggling his eyebrows at her.

"So you're saying we break into this place? Great, Castle, just great. Have you forgotten? Me...cop?"

"We're not going to break in, so don't get your panties in a wad. And if we do have to do any breaking, _I'll_ do it. Don't worry."

"You're not very reassuring."

Rick sighed and gave her a look. "Kate, this is your vacation, remember? Just go with the flow."

They drove for a few minutes, and then Kate asked him, "You said we have to go in from the beach. So where are we going? There aren't very many places to park."

"There's a public beach nearby. We park there, walk down the beach, see if we can find any good shells, and then take the beach path to the complex. Oh, and you have to hold my hand and lean really close to me. Then people will think we're lovers caught up in each other's awesomeness and they won't try to disturb us."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Sure, _Dick._"

"Because of my sheer and unmitigated awesomeness, which you can reinforce later, I'm going to ignore that comment."

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They slowly walked on the beach for a while, holding hands as Rick had mandated and carrying their shoes with their free hands. It was unusual seeing others on the beach; their section of the beach on Captiva was pretty well deserted most of the time. But this was a public section of beach, with public parking and that was hard to find, so it attracted many more sunbathers, seashell hunters, and sandcastle makers.

Thanks to Rick's prior scouting using Google Maps, he knew roughly where the path to the other complex was. They left the beach area and went over a long wooden bridge that spanned a little inland waterway. It didn't look very deep, but it was murky and in the air she could smell the odor of a dead, rotting fish. "Hope the rest of the complex smells better, or I wouldn't be impressed," she told Rick.

"This is a nature preserve, remember? So people kayak in here. To see nature. And in this case, to smell it, I guess."

At the end of the bridge, they encountered a tall fence with a sign announcing that beyond the fence was the private property of the 'Reves du Mer' resort. "Dreams of the sea?" Kate translated, rolling her eyes. "That's so...cheesy."

"Beckett, remember what I said before about going with it?"

Rick pointed to the open gate. "See, we're not breaking into anything. Someone left the gate open for us...it's like an open invitation!"

They went through the gate, leaving it ajar as it had been when they found it. The path beyond the fence changed into a neatly manicured one, lined with towering palm trees. Ahead of them, they could see tennis courts, and various buildings housing, Rick guessed, the condos. Off to his extreme right about 20 feet away, right in front of an intersecting fence, there was a little bench, just big enough for two people to sit and enjoy some shade under the palms. Before she could object, Rick grabbed Kate's hand and led her over to the bench. She saw where he was leading her and quipped, "We just got here...don't you want to look around first? Or do you old geezers need a few more rest breaks?"

"I'm going to ignore that last comment too. Let's cuddle on the bench and enjoy the ambiance."He pulled her down next to him and slung an arm around her. Then he buried his face in her hair and gave her neck a little kiss right under her ear. "I really like the ambiance here," he whispered in her ear, his warm breath giving her little shivers. She closed her eyes for a moment and savored the closeness, and how fast he could turn her to mush. The mushy feeling was the reason that what she was saw when she opened her eyes didn't register right away. When it did register, she furiously began tapping Rick on the leg as he continued his light kisses on her neck. He didn't stop, so finally she pinched him to get his attention, as her eyes remained glued to what was in front of her.

"Ow!" he exclaimed. "Why did you do that? All you..." he trailed off as Kate put a hand over his mouth and shushed him. When she pointed in front of her, his eyes got big.

Walking toward them, having just crawled throught he open fence gate, was an eight-foot-long alligator.

As if by mutual unspoken connection, both Kate and Rick stood up and then stepped up on the low bench. As the alligator still approached them, they realized that the bench didn't offer enough height for the distance that they'd prefer to have from the huge reptile. "Come on," Kate said as she stepped on the back of the bench and then hopped back onto the fence behind it. Rick hesitated. "Now is not the time to go 'old geezer' on me." So he followed her lead and both of them were perched about 5 feet high holding onto the chain-link fence for dear life.

As they stood perched uncomfortably on the fence and watched the alligator stop a few feet in front of the bench, very much blocking their path anywhere else, Kate looked at Rick and said "So what do we do now, writer boy?"

_**

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I had more votes for reptiles, so there's your reptile. Sorry I made you wait until the end, but Billy busted into things and we had to take care of him first. He really has no sense of timing, that Billy. ;-)

_**About Billy and Ginny...they were merely stereotypical fictional roles that I used to (hopefully) add a little humor (and unexpected surprise) to the story. They should not resemble anyone and if they do, it's purely coincidental. Please forgive their bad grammar; Billy and Ginny didn't do terribly well in English class at school. ;-)**_

_**As always, reviews are greatly, hugely appreciated and definitely make my day! I hope you stay tuned to find out what happens next.**_


	21. Chapter 21

_**Thanks, everyone for being so patient. I'd hoped to have this chapter up earlier, but my creative juices weren't flowing very freely. I'm still not entirely happy with the exact point when they get away from the alligator, but that's actually a small part of the whole chapter, so perhaps if I get a brainstorm later, I can go back and change it.**_

_**There's also a reference to something that was said way back in chapter 6. See if you can figure it out.**_

_**(One note about the alligator thing: I'm basing this loosely on an experience that I had where I saw an alligator out where I didn't expect to see one, and my own POV at the time and afterwards. I didn't realize it was an alligator at first...I was kind of far away from it and I thought it was some other kind of strange animal, so I grabbed a couple of cameras and took off after it. And after I saw it really **_**was**_**an alligator, I kept trying to get closer to get a better picture, not really thinking that duh...this is an ALLIGATOR! Luckily it was walking away from me. Later, when it was gone, I was thinking back on the situation and was amazed when I realized that I had just chased an alligator! So my point is...in an unusual situation, you sometimes do one thing at the time, but then you think back on it later and go OMG, am I insane? I can't believe I did that! Or, did that really happen?)**_

_**And of course, I will issue the appropriate disclaimers that I do not own any of the characters mentioned, except the alligator, and him only (thankfully) in a virtual sense. And I also want to give a very heartfelt thanks to those of you who continue to follow the story and leave those wonderful reviews. I truly love all of the emails that I get from all of you who follow it, review it and even mark it as a favorite. Amazing! ((Hugs)) to you all! **_

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Kate and Rick stood perched on the fence as best as they could. Chain link fences were just not meant for people to stand on them comfortably for a long time. However, no matter the level of discomfort on the fence, it was better than the alternative of getting chomped on by the beast below them.

"I'm still waiting," Kate reminded Rick, "for you to write us one of your incredible plot twists to get us out of this without loss of life, limb, or tallywhacker." Rick shuddered and almost involuntarily tried to cross his legs as he imagined the implications of her last word in reference to the alligator's teeth, but then realized she was grinning. "Sorry," she continued, "I just _had_ to say that. Levity for the situation and all that. And the look on your face was priceless."

Rick looked from her, hanging tightly to the fence, to the alligator on the ground who was sunning himself casually with little concern for the people hanging above it, back to Kate. "Much as I would love to also prevent loss of any bodily appendages, especially _that_ one, I got nothing," he admitted.

"Why did you have to drag me over to that bench anyway?"

He leveled a conceited glare at her. "I didn't see you complaining too much until you saw Mr. Big."

She was silent a moment. "Come on, Castle, think. Don't you know how to be some sort of alligator-whisperer or something? Something you might have learned when you did some kind of up-close-and-personal training session with a female alligator wrangler?"

"Unfortunately, no. But that _does_ sound like it could be very interesting..." Rick trailed off as he pursed his lips and looked off into the distance, imagining something that Kate didn't want to know about.

She reached over and thumped him on the head, much like Ginny had done to Billy, but slightly inhibited by the fact that she was hanging on the fence. "Castle, focus!"

"I still got nothing." But then he adjusted himself to brace his back against the palm tree next to the fence, while his feet were still stuck in the fence. "Good, that works. Now, both hands free, and...voila!" He produced his phone out of his pocket.

"Great. Who ya gonna call? Gator-busters?"

"Nah. But this does have a camera, and aside from being quite freaked out that there is an alligator literally below us, I still think it's really cool that I'm this close to an alligator and it's not in a zoo. And it's not eating me. I really need to take a picture of it," he explained.

"Seriously? You are _seriously_ going to take a picture?"

"Well, yeahhhh," he said as he leaned around the tree and began snapping pictures of the gator. "There." Then he punched a few more things on the phone, and finally held it out in front of him, but turned around so he was taking a picture of himself.

Scratch that, Kate thought, finally realizing that he was now taking a _video_ of himself when he started conversing with his phone.

"Hey, guys," he started. "It's me, Castle. In Florida. And here's Beckett," he said, as he turned the phone around to record her.

When she saw him turn the phone around to shoot her, she exclaimed "Oh, no you don't! Castle, turn that thing off or point it away from me, or I swear you will not know what gender you are at the end of today! Oh, my God, I cannot believe you're recording me on a fence..."

He then turned the camera back around to face himself, and continued "Yes, that was Beckett, on a fence. And she's not too happy now, because we've been 'fenced' by our friend, Mr. Al E. Gator on the ground here." At that point, Rick pointed the phone toward the alligator on the ground, who must have some acting genes in it's reptilian DNA pool because it picked that moment to yawn and show it's teeth...perfect for Castle's video. Kate continued to mutter threats in the background at Rick. Still filming the alligator, Rick continued, "I would say 'treed', but I think 'fenced' is more appropriate in this case because we're on a fence, not in a tree. So since this fence is getting just a tad uncomfortable, if any of you know how to scare away an alligator, send me a text or give me a call back. Otherwise we're probably gonna be stuck here for a while." Then, after he pointed the camera back to record himself, he said in a stage whisper, "And as you can hear, Beckett is getting a wee bit testy because for some reason she thinks this is _my_ fault, and that's almost more scary than the alligator."

He clicked off the video and leaned back against the tree. Then he tapped at the phone a little more, waited a few seconds, and said "There. All done."

Kate groaned and closed her eyes. "Please do NOT tell me that you sent that to someone." When she heard no response from Rick, she opened her eyes, glared at him and said "Well?"

"You asked me not to tell you that I send it to someone. So I didn't tell you. Really, Kate, if you want me to tell you something, then don't tell me not to tell you the very thing that you want me to tell you."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Who did you send it to? Please tell me this isn't going to be on Youtube. And so help me, if you twitter about this, that will be the last tweet you tweet!"

"OK, I _can_tell you that. No Youtube or Twitter. I sent it to Ryan."

"Castle, in case you haven't forgotten, I work with these people. They do not need to see me...fenced, as you say, by an alligator. My God, I will never live this down. Somewhere in the hordes of weird people that you know, is there not one reptilian biologist? Or a zookeeper? Or someone that you can call to find out how to get away from a hungry alligator?"

"I could find the name of the complex and call the management and have them rescue us."

"And get arrested for trespassing? I'm a_ cop_, Rick! No, thank you. Maybe someone will walk by on the way to the beach and the alligator will get scared. Let's just wait a few minutes."

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_Meanwhile, back in New York City..._

Ryan was sitting at his desk, catching up on paperwork and generally being thankful that he wasn't anywhere outside. The three inches of new snow wasn't much, but it was enough to bring out the idiot drivers and enough to make everything just a little messier and wetter.

He was entering some data into a cross-referencing program when he heard the beep from his email program that signaled a new message. Grateful for the diversion, he popped over to his email and a smile immediately formed on his face. "Hey, Esposito, get over here. I got a message from Castle."

"From Castle? Hey, how come he didn't send me one?"

"Just shut up and get over here. Hey, it's a video. You think it's a vid of some hottie in a little thong?"

Ryan clicked 'play' on the video, and they watched as they saw Castle introduce himself. But then he moved the camera to show...Beckett on a fence? Beckett in shorts and a frilly tank top, but on a fence? Both guys looked at each other, eyebrows furrowed as they saw their boss hanging onto a fence for dear life. But then they saw and heard her yell at Castle, and both winced when she made the comment about Castle not knowing his gender by the end of the day.

"Well at least he's still alive," Ryan observed.

"For now, anyway," Esposito clarified.

Then as the image changed to the alligator sunning itself, and it opened its mouth, both detectives' jaws dropped open.

"Damn, bro," Esposito muttered, staring at the monitor. "You really stepped in it now."

The video ended and the two detectives just looked at each other. "What do we do now?" Ryan asked.

"Uh...Why are you looking at me? Aren't you the one who has all of that weird stuff floating around up here?" He tapped Ryan's head. "Don't you have any alligator factoids in there somewhere?"

Ryan thought for a moment. "No. Well, not yet anyway." And he flipped some screens on his computer and started typing. "Ah, here we go."

Esposito had gone back to sit at his desk, so he leaned back in his chair and asked "What're you doin'?"

"Drawing from the collective brainpower of the world..." he replied, tapping a few keys. He looked back at Esposito. "Uh, web search. Yup, here we go...oh, huh..."

Esposito asked "What did you find?"

"Did you know that an average of 150 people per year are killed worldwide by falling coconuts?"

"So maybe a coconut will fall on the alligator and kill it? You trying to do a Castle imitation of going off on tangents or something?"

"Remember who Castle sent the vid to, dude. It wasn't you. Remember that," Ryan finished as he got out his phone.

Espositio muttered something under his breath as Ryan began texting, looking at his computer screen a couple of times for reference. When he was done, he snapped his phone shut, leaned back in his chair and glared at Esposito with a smug smile on his face. Esposito glared back, then got out of his chair and grabbed his jacket. "Come on. It's time for lunch. And you're buying." Ryan grabbed his coat and followed him, wishing he was in Florida so he could see how Castle got himself out of this mess.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick's phone beeped, indicating a new text. He was still leaning against the tree, and Kate had even grudgingly admitted that it wasn't a bad idea, and had done the same leaning act with the tree that was a few feet away on the other side of the bench. The alligator was quite comfortable and seemed in no hurry to move.

He adjusted his feet in the fence a bit, and then unlocked his phone to read the text. "Good, it's from Ryan. Oh..._oh_," he said as he read the text to himself.

"What does it say?"

He began reading: "_Nice vid. To scare gator u mst be big n loud-yell scrm jump dance sing. And if u dance n sing have beckt take vid of u_."

Kate got an evil happy smile on her face. "You heard the man, Castle. Hand over the phone."

He handed it to her, but then said with an evil smile of his own, "It won't do you any good. It's locked-password protected."

She gave him a 'Give me a break' look, complete with raised eyebrows, for a full five seconds, before easily typing in his password. She held the phone up to show him the now-unlocked home screen and said "I can't believe you would underestimate me. Have you learned _nothing_ since you've been around me?"

"I stand corrected," he muttered, wondering how the heck she'd gotten his password. He'd have to be more careful around the obviously resourceful Detective Beckett. He looked down at the ground and took a deep breath. "Well, here goes nothing," he said and jumped down to the ground, to the right side of the bench but still several quite a few feet from the alligator. The alligator didn't move, but it did twitch its tail a bit.

"Well, don't just stand there, Rick. Be big and loud, just like Ryan said."

"Why me, anyway? Why don't you do it? You scare people for a living."

"Think about it, Rick. Do you really want me to have to tell people that _I_ scared the alligator away while you just hung onto the fence and watched?"

"You're the one trained in all sorts of weird hand to hand combat stuff."

"Castle...really?"

"Fine." Rick waved his arms up and down a couple of times like he was flying, and he said "woooo wooooooo". The alligator barely moved.

"Lame, Castle, really lame. Are you trying to be Casper the Friendly Ghost or something? Now, come on, think big, think loud, think scary. Oh, wait a minute, I might have just the thing." She bit her lower lip as she concentrated on his phone, tapping it and sliding her finger across the screen. Finally, she smiled. "Found it. Perfect. This should do the trick," she said as she tapped the screen again and Justin Bieber's voice began singing the lyrics from 'Baby'. "If you can do it in front of a bar full of peole, then you can do it for one little alligator. Now move it, Rick!"

"Uh...Beckett," he said through the sounds of the music, "in case you haven't noticed, that is not a _little_ alligator.

"Channel your inner Bieber. Now, Rick."

Rick closed his eyes and extended his arms, shaking them a little bit to loosen them up as he listened to the music. As the music played out of the phone, he 'sang' along with it, but after a few lines turned back toward Beckett, while still keeping a keen eye on the gator.

"Beckett, I'm just not feeling it."

"Feel the Bieber, Castle, that's an order."

Just then, the alligator chose that moment to yawn again, of course showing its teeth as it did so. Castle was so shocked by the gator (and the fact that he was now in much closer proximity to those teeth) that he yelled and jumped up and down, and then started waving his arms while singing 'Baby, baby, baby' in an odd tone that had a decided quivery and desperate tone attached to it. For several seconds, several very long seconds, the reptile just stood there, but then it must have decided that the spectacle of human 'talent' in front of him was just too much to bear. Both Beckett and Castle watched in astonishment as the large beast turned and started ambling off in the other direction, not out of the gate that it came in, but nevertheless, away from them.

Beckett climbed down from the fence and attempted to shake some circulation back in her feet after spending all of that time perched on the fence. Rick grabbed her hand and started hauling her toward the open gate. When they got to the gate, Kate pointed to the sign that they had neglected to see when they first came through it, because the gate was open and faced away from them; a sign that said "Keep gate closed" with a picture of an alligator below it.

Rick shrugged his head at it. "Would have been nice to know that _before_ we came in."

"Guess they didn't count on trespassers, " Beckett said dryly.

Rick aimed a pithy look at Kate as he continued hauling her out of the private complex. "Hey," she realized, "Didn't you want to go look around?"

"To be honest, Al kind of spoiled my mood," Rick confided.

He continued hauling her over the bridge to the beach, and then he pulled her off behind some tall beach grass and bushes, out of the way of any beachgoers. He pulled her into a tight embrace and buried his face in her neck. "OK, even though that was just kind of weird, I'm also starting to realize that it was also really scary. And I have to say that I am _so_ incredibly glad that you're OK."

Beckett stood there, wrapped in his embrace, surprised but definitely not minding it _at all_, and thinking that despite how unbelievable the situation was, what he'd said was one of the sweetest things she'd ever heard. She felt a little flutter in her belly at his words, and at the tone of complete and utter sincerity she heard in his voice. She hugged him back, as it started to sink in that they had just been cornered by an alligator. A real wild alligator, with real teeth. As strange as that sounded. She pulled away a little to look at his face and she saw kind of a dazed expression on it, a lot like the expression that she guessed she was probably wearing.

"Did we _really_ just get cornered by an alligator?"

"I think so. Is it me, or does that whole thing seem kind of surreal now, even though it was just a few minutes ago?"

"Surreal is one way to put it." She laid her forehead back down on his shoulder, but couldn't fully stifle a laugh. "Rick, why is it that you seem to attract the oddballs, even animals? I mean, why did an 8 foot long alligator have to wander over to check us out? Why couldn't it be a furry little puppy or something?"

"Well, if I recall, the first thing I 'attracted' this morning was _you_." He kissed her cheek. "But then it all went to hell from there. Old geezer..." he finished, remembering what Billy had called him.

"Well, look on the bright side. For an old geezer, you did a pretty good job of scaring away the gator."

"He probably just didn't like Justin Bieber." Reluctantly, he released her and they started walking out to the beach. "Come on, I really need a stiff drink."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Back at the house, they walked into the house and Rick plopped down in one of the chairs. Without missing a beat, Kate walked over to the bar, poured him a couple of shots of brandy and handed him the glass. He downed it and then gave an all-over shudder, right as his phone beeped. He looked at the screen and smiled, then motioned Kate over to the chair. She settled down on his lap and leaned back against him as he showed the message to her.

The message was from Ryan, "_You guys still alive? txt me bck. if ur dead im gonna sell vid as last vid of Castle n make millions."_

After she read the message, Kate got a determined look on her face. She told him "Get it ready. We're sending him another video. Call it proof of life." Rick got to the necessary window, tapped the screen, then held the phone out in front of them. "Go," he said.

"Hey, Ryan, and hey, Esposito, since I'm sure you're watching this too. Yes, we are alive. Rick and Justin Bieber scared the gator away." Let them stew on that for a while, Kate thought. Rick, his head right next to hers, nodded like he was a cocky Captain America saving the world from rogue alligators. "But let this be your warning that if anyone on the face of this earth-living, dead, animal, vegetable, or mineral-if _anyone_ else sees that alligator video besides you two yahoos, you will find that you _will_ live to regret it. You will spend so much time looking over your shoulder that you'll forget which way is forward. Any revenge you can imagine I would exact on you will only be the tip of the Beckett iceberg. You have no idea." Rick stopped the recording and sent the video to Ryan's email, smiling as he imagined them taking her words to heart. Nothing in the world could make you imagine various forms of painful and uncomfortable punishment like the stern voice of Detective Beckett could.

When that was done, Kate hopped up. "Let's go, Castle."

"Where?"

"Haven't you looked in the fridge lately? The food that you ordered when we got down here is dwindling considerably. We need to do one of those domestic things you were talking about a couple of days ago and go grocery shopping. I'm feeling like I need some spaghetti and meatballs tonight. So get your baseball cap and let's go."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As they exited the house in Florida, Ryan returned to his computer to find another message from Castle. "Aha!" he exclaimed. He held up a hand and snapped his fingers. "Esposito, got a message. Get over here."

They started the video, eyebrows furrowing briefly at the Justin Bieber comment. But then they looked closer at the screen and their jaws dropped almost in perfect unison as they realized what they were seeing.

"Man, you see that?" Esposito asked.

"Holy...she's sitting on-" Ryan started.

"-his lap!" Esposito finished.

"And he has his arm around her!"

"And she looks...she looks..."

"comfortable!"

The two detectives turned and stared at each other for a moment, before breaking out in huge grins and high-fiving each other. "It's about damn time, bro," Esposito said to the absent Castle, as he opened his wallet and slapped a twenty in Ryan's hand.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As Kate and Rick shopped for groceries, they had no idea of the buzz that the video had created among their closest friends and coworkers at the precinct. Since Kate had made the threats against them for showing the alligator video, they creatively surmised that even though it was by omission, she'd never said anything about showing the second video to anyone, which of course they happily did. Montgomery merely sniffed and walked back into his office, but Ryan thought he did see a small grin tugging at his mouth. Lanie, however, had a reaction similar to Ryan's and Esposito's, complete with a shriek and a "Damn girl is holding out on me" comment. Luckily, the detectives went down to the morgue to show her the video, so the only audience to her reaction was already dead.

Lanie sent a text to Kate that simply read "Ur holding out on me...need the 411". Of course, Kate had no idea about the level of familiarity that she and Rick had unconsiously displayed in the video, so she just filed it to respond to later.

They made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and then later took a long walk on the beach, holding hands, sometimes stopping to kiss, or trying to alternately dodge the waves or push the other one in the water. The moon was almost full, so it gave off a good deal of light for them to see where they were going. Kate had forgotten to put shoes on, so when she came to an area with a lot of shells, Rick picked her to carry her piggy-back style, making a comment about how Billy should see him now, muttering something else about old geezers.

They talked about nothing in particular, but it had an easy familiarity that belied the amount of time they had really been 'together' in romantic terms. Rick was the one who first broached the subject of their new feelings and the outward expression of them.

"You know, all of this feels so new, but in some way it feels so normal too."

"The beach in the middle of winter?"

Rick gazed sideways at Kate with a reproachful look in his eyes. "Come on, Kate, you know what I'm talking about. This," he clarified, holding up their joined hands. "Us."

"I know, I know. I just love messing with you. But you know how people have always looked at us and thought there was more going on, so I got in a habit of either ignoring or denying. With all of the kinky cases that we've had, sometimes I just wanted to hang a sign around my neck that said 'no, we're not involved'." Then when he didn't say anyting for a few beats, she asked "Or were we?"

He looked at her. "I don't know, honestly. You amaze me...you've always amazed me. We work so well together, not including the times you threaten to shoot me of course. I never thought in terms of being 'involved' with you, not on a realistic level anyway, because you are so different. You always shot me down, and then you started dating other guys..."

"Hey, you had other girlfriends too."

"Yes, but none lately. I think I'd been unconsciously comparing them to you, and I lost interest in everyone else that wasn't you. So even though you made it clear that you weren't going to be a...what did you call it? 'A notch on my bedpost'...I still couldn't help but revel in the fantasy. And the attraction. But you know, don't you, that you could never be a notch on my bedpost?"

"The thought that I might be more than a passing fancy is starting to get through, yeah."

"Yes, there's that...if you were a passing fancy, I would have been gone a long time ago, not being totally and completely consumed by being around you as I am lately."

Kate didn't know what to say to that. What do you say when a man has just admitted to being totally and completely consumed by being in your presence? That fluttery feeling that she'd felt in her belly after the alligator incident was back in full force.

Rick continued, a somber tone to his voice, "But there is another reason why you could never be a notch on my bedpost." She looked at him expectantly. With a serious look on his face, he continued "I have a metal bedframe, and it simply cannot be notched."

She looked at him for two very full, very long seconds, and at the end of those two seconds she saw the corners of his mouth start to turn up into the beginnings of a smile. As she realized what he said, and the joke he was making, she said "Ohhhh...youuuuu..." as he took off running back toward the house. She made it seem like she was going to chase him, but then she stopped and returned to a slow walk. Let him tire himself out thinking that she was chasing him. But she did now realize, metal bedframe or not, that she would be more than a notch on his bedpost. And darned if that fluttery felling wasn't back in her belly again.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

It was close to midnight, and Kate was laying in her bed, still thinking about how quickly things were happening since they came down here. It had taken them over two years to get to this point to touch freely, let alone kiss, and now their romance-wow, that still sounded weird to say-was progressing at warp speed.

She was distracted from her thoughts by her phone beeping, alerting that she had a new text message. She grabbed the phone. From Castle? Why was he texting her? He was just right down the hall.

_"R U awake?"_

_"Yes. whats wrng?"_

_"nothing"_

_"Y R U txting me?"_

_"I told u I would keep in cntct if I had battery life lft in my phone. So hi."_

She laughed, because she did recall him telling her that. She just didn't think it would extend quite this far, when she had just said goodnight to him and he was just down the hall.

_"So u did. Hi."_

_"What do u want to do tomorrow?"_

She thought for a moment, then got an evil little smile on her face.

_"go for a long run b4 it gets too hot & then go see billy & ginny. Maybe double date?"_

It was about two seconds after she pushed 'send' that she heard a scream coming from his room. Her phone beeped.

_"No way. please tell me you're joking."_

_"joking"_

_"you're evil, detective."_

_"and you love it."_

_"Sweet dreams, Kate"_

_"Ditto, Rick"_

They both placed their phones on their respective nightstands and settled into contented and peaceful slumber.

_**

* * *

**_

Once again, sorry it took so long for this chapter. Thanks so much for sticking with me and the story!

_**A note about the 'tallywhacker': I heard it on an episode of 'Cops' once...the cop arrested some drunk guy and the guy had his pants unzipped and...um... So the cop says "Sir, you got your tallywhacker hangin' out there. Put your tallywhacker in and zip your pants." I just about fell off the chair laughing. It was so unexpected, and the word was great. So I just had to resurrect it. **_

_**Anyway, thanks for reading, and please review! I love to read what you think, what you like, and what you don't. Thanks in advance!**_


	22. Chapter 22

_**Here it is: the somewhat long awaited chapter 22. It's getting a bit harder for me to write this-to make the story come out how I want it to-hence the longer amount of time between chapters. I can only hope this will be worth the wait. Thank you so much to everyone who is still reading and following this story!**_

_**I do have a song in this chapter, toward the end. I'm not doing a songfic, but I thought this fit so I hope it's OK to put in here.**_

_**(Before you get started, I just have to ask all of you who have been faithfully following this story...Did you hear the mention of the alligator in 'Last Call'? In reference to this story and the last chapter that had been posted when 'Last Call' aired, I thought the mention of it, then, in that episode, was totally hilarious! Who woulda thunk you'd hear them talk about an alligator in December? Love it!)**_

_**Disclaimers: the usual. Don't own anyone.**_

_**Happy reading! I hope you like it.**_

* * *

Rick slowly came back to consciousness from his slumbering state, opening one eye and looking around as much as he could with half his vision and his cheek smooshed into the sheet of the bed. Judging by the bright sunshine streaming in throught he window, he guessed it wasn't terribly. He noticed how quiet the house was. Was Kate awake? As the cobwebs cleared from his brain, he remembered the texts from the night before. Smiling, he grabbed his phone to carry on the trend by sending her a good morning text, rolling over in the bed so he could prop his head on the pillows. After he pressed a button to wake up the screen, he was surprised to see that he wasn't the first one with the idea of some wake-up texting; a message from Kate was waiting for him to open it.

_"Good morning sleepyhead. Went for run. With shoes. Later."_

He looked at the time of the text and realized that she'd been gone for 45 minutes already. He rolled out of bed and remembering what had happened the last time he'd left his room in his boxers-coincidentally also the last time Kate had gone for a run-he grabbed a pair of shorts and stepped into them as he walked, crashing into the wall when his foot got stuck and he lost his balance. He really needed to learn to stand still when he got dressed before he injured himself. That would be one heck of a thing to explain to everyone.

He got to the kitchen and found coffee already made, just waiting for him. Bless that woman for starting the coffee already. He poured himself a cup and took it out on the back deck by the pool. He'd taken his phone with him so he could check his email and the news. He also called Alexis to check in with her on her way to school and tell her about the alligator experience from the day before.

"So you were trespassing?" Leave it to his daughter to not be concerned for his physical well-being, but to instead point out his semi-illegal activities.

"Wellllll...only a little bit..."

"Dad, you either were or you weren't. So how did Detective Beckett get you out of that mess?"

"Hey, I take offense at that! Why do you automatically assume that Beckett was the one who saved us? Why wouldn't you think that _I_, your wonderful, talented, witty and yet ruggedly handsome father could be the brave hero that would rescue us from the big bad gator?"

"Dadddd..." she said in a 'duh' type of tone.

"I will have you know that I _am_ the one who scared away the alligator. You can even ask Kate."

"I'm sure you were very scary, dad," she placated.

"I was! It left right away. And we didn't stick around and wait for it to come back."

They talked for a few more minutes, but by then Alexis had arrived at school and needed to turn her phone off, so they said goodbye with promises to talk soon. Rick sipped his coffee and was surprised a few minutes later when Kate jogged up the steps from the beach, out of breath. She was dripping wet with perspiration from a hard run. And to Rick, she looked sexy as hell.

She paused for several seconds, her hands on her knees, catching her breath. Then she walked over to the pool, bent down, and splashed some water on her arms and chest. The movement, although he knew she only did it to cool herself off after her run, was incredibly alluring and enticing. Rick walked over to her and brushed a damp piece of hair out of her face. "Good morning, beautiful," he said in a sultry tone.

"Ugh, Rick, don't touch me! I'm all sweaty!"

He didn't care. It seemed like too long since he'd seen her, touched her, even though it had only been a matter of hours. He grabbed her trim waist with both hands and slowly pulled her against him, dipping his mouth to hers for a kiss. She acquiesced immediately, leaning into his kiss. Her breathing was still a bit labored from her run, which he found to be a great turn-on. Despite her protestations, her hands stole up around his neck. Even when she was exhausted from her run, hot, in need of a shower and hungry, she still felt the immediate punch of need for him in her belly. It was still such a new feeling, and such a powerful one, that made her all the more surprised by the intensity. She pulled him closer to her body with her arms while she pressed herself to him at the same time.

Rick deepened the kiss, but when when she pressed her body to him so suddenly it caught him a little off balance. This new, amorous Beckett still threw him for a loop sometimes. He stepped backward to try to catch himself and stepped...

Into thin air.

Above the pool.

In the split second when he knew that he couldn't right them and keep them from going into the pool, he grabbed her tightly with his arms and sealed his mouth even more firmly against hers. They hit the water, him on his back taking the brunt of the impact, the force of the plunge sending them down near the bottom. He felt her involutary jerk when her overheated body came into contact with the cool water, but still, she didn't pull her mouth away from his. She grabbed his head with her hands, and kept the kiss going, until the need for air forced them both to surface.

Where they fell was the deeper end of the pool, so they were forced to separate to swim the few strokes over to the wall to have some support. She held onto the wall while she pulled off her soaked running shoes and threw them on the pool deck. "While that had to be one of the more interesting good morning kisses I've ever had-and definitely the winner for the most oxygen deprived-the next time you decide to throw me in a pool, could you at least let me take off my good running shoes first?"

"Well I could turn that around and say the next time you decide to launch your amazingly wonderful body at me and cause me to lose my balance over the edge of a pool, you should take your own shoes off beforehand. And feel free to take off anything else too. Even _everything _else. I won't be picky."

"I did _not_ launch myself at you." Did she?

"Believe what you want. But I know a launch when I feel one. And that one was definitely followed by..." he paused and raised one eyebrow at her, "liftoff."

Her shoes and socks disposed of, she hung onto the side of the pool and stared him down with a raised eyebrow of her own and a look that said '_oh, really?'_. She knew the game was on. "And tell me, Captain AmeriCastle, after liftoff, just where was your little spaceship going to travel to?"

"Little? My _little_ spaceship?" he sputtered, but then regained control to continue the verbal sparring. "I can assure you, without a doubt, that my spaceship is _large_ enough to suit me quite nicely. You see, it's definitely large enough so that _riding_ on my spaceship can be exceedingly...comfortable. Quite _satisfying_ for all of..._someone's_...uh..._travel_ needs." He paused for a moment, to let his words, and the innuendo, sink in before continuing. "But in answer to your question, there's a space station far out in the galaxy. I'm under the impression that it's quite a..._pleasurable_...place to visit, even though I haven't been there yet. The ultimate goal is for my ship to..._dock..._with said space station."

Kate smiled an evil little smile, letting him know she was right with him in the game. Now it was her turn to volley. "So how long does it take for this _docking_ action to happen, from the point of-" she licked her lips and clearly enunciated each syllable, each sound-"liftoff? What if the spaceship loses its way...you know, forgets how to _fly_ or something?"

"Forgetting how to fly is generally never a problem. The spaceship has an autopilot system in the ships _head_, which controls the direction, making it almost instinctual. But otherwise, that's where the navigator comes in. With the right navigator, the whole _docking_ experience can take a long time. There could be need for some..._adjustments_."

"Adjustments, you say?"

"Yes, of course. _Docking _a _large_ spaceship such as mine takes great skill and finesse. All angles have to be checked, the..._fit_...has to be tested, and even the _angle of entry_ into the dock may need to be changed. Every _docking _experience is new and different, so a good navigator has to be willing to try new things, you know, like different _positions_ for the ship." Score one for Rick.

"Hmmm...I could see where a good navigator would be important. What if, for example, the _thrusters_ misfire? What if the ship _ejects its payload_ too early...that is, _prematurely_?"

Castle blinked at Beckett, two long slow blinks, before a cocky smile returned to his face. Score one for Beckett. She was good. "While not exactly new, I'll have you know that my ship is a finely oiled machine. It's quite experienced at _docking_ and those situations never," he waved his finger in front of her, "_ever_ happen."

Kate just shook her head. "But surely you know that nothing is fail-safe. There's a vacuum in space and things can get,"-she licked her lips seductively again-"..._sucked_...out." Rick, momentarily distracted by her last volley, gulped. Score two for Beckett. But oh, she wasn't done yet. "So if there's no problem with _thrusters_ or the _premature payload ejac...ejection,_" she corrected herself, even though she had made the mistake deliberately, "are there any other problems that your navigator has to worry about?"

Recovering, he narrowed his eyes at her and continued. "Oh, none at all, once the space station has lowered its force fields. Sometimes there are certain _barriers_, like the force fields, which can prevent a _pleasant docking experience_. But if the force fields are _removed_, then the _docking_ experience will be a very memorable one indeed."

"You sound very sure of this."

"Oh, believe me, I am." he replied, winking at her. They merely stared at each other for several beats, smug looks on both of their faces. Then, still in the pool, he dove underwater and surfaced several feet away from her.

"What are you doing?"

"I thought since I was in the pool already, I might as well go for a swim. Or more specifically and in keeping with our cosmic-themed conversation, my spaceship's engines are revving a bit fast and it would do it some good to take a little flight around a cold galaxy. Away from the temptations of my very alluring space station."

Now that the verbal volleball match of cosmic sexual innuendo was done, Kate laughed. Not so much at Rick's reaction to the innuendo, but because her reaction very closely matched his own. Not that she would let him know that though. His ego was already big enough. But the fact of the matter is that now that she opened herself up having a more...personal...relationship with him, she had to admit that the man got to her. Even if he was weaving crazy stories of spaceships and space stations, fraught with more innuendo than an oversexed teenage boy's lockerroom chat with his buddies.

She hopped out of the pool and looked back at him. "Have fun with your flight. I have a date with a steam shower. And then you're taking me out for breakfast."

"But I bought pop-tarts yesterday!"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Breakfast, Rick. A _real_ breakfast. Half an hour."

"Yes, ma'am."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They found a resort with a nice brunch, and Rick and Kate were seated at an intimate little table for two on a beautiful covered outside patio. They each ordered their own breakfast selections, but when the waiter brought them, they each found themselves eyeing up the other one. Yet neither would admit that the other looked just as good as his/her own; they just kept eating and talking about nonsensical things. And still eyeing up each others remaining food. Finally Kate had had enough.

"Rick, enough already."

"What?"

She picked up her plate. "Here. Gimme yours."

"Thought you'd never ask. Or command, as the case may be."

"Just pass me the blueberry syrup and eat."

"Oooo, bossy. I like it."

She shot a glare at him, but couldn't help it when the corners of her mouth twitched up in a smile. They finished the rest of their meals, each commenting randomly about the food, with the comments interspersed with little grins at each other for no particular reason. It was just...fun. Even something as mundane as eating breakfast was fun. After their plates were taken away, they sat companionably, sipped their coffee and continued to talk about nothing in particular.

At one point, Rick put his hands over Kate's on top of the table. "Have I told you how glad I am that you're here with me? No," he amended, "not just that I'm glad you're here with me, but that you agreed to come even after I sort of kidnapped you, and you stayed, and you seem like you're having a good time, and that we're, uh, more friendly. More that 'just friends' type of friendly. I'm most happy about that, even though sometimes I still can't believe it...you...me...you know. I mean-"

"You're rambling, Rick," she interrupted, turning her hands over under his to caress his palms with her fingers in an intimate gesture. "I'm glad you're happy I'm here. I'd hate to think that you went to all of this effort because you just had money to burn and I was the most convenient person for you to 'sort of' kidnap. And you know, I'm glad I'm here too. And about the rest of it...I know what you mean. I'm still a little surprised by things too, at times. Other times it feels..." she trailed off, looking down with a pensive look on her face.

Rick looked at her expectantly. "Good? Awesome? Amazing? Please don't tell me you're going to say wrong, or even gross or disgusting. I don't think I could take that," he finished, suddenly looking nervous.

She looked up again, right into his eyes. With a small smile, she said two words and the worried feeling left his face and was replaced by a look of relief followed with a big smile.

"Really nice."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As they left the resort, the saw information about a party at the resort that night, an 80s/90s night with food, music and dancing. They'd seen resort employees putting up decorations around the pool area and carrying equipment and supplies in and out of one of the ballrooms that opened out onto the pool area.

Rick stopped in front of one of the signs giving information about the event. He looked at Kate and side-bobbed his head toward the sign. "Want to?"

She looked at him, back at the sign, and then back at him with narrowed eyes. "On one condition."

"Anything, m'lady."

"You leave the Bieber wig at home, and you promise, under penalty of being thrown in an alligator pit here and being shot when we get home, that you will NOT sing. Not even one note. And you will stay off the stage."

"That's three things."

She crossed her arms and stared at him, and let that serve as her response..

"OK, fine. Deal. Even though I feel I must point out that if you throw me in an alligator pit down here, there probably won't be anything left for you to shoot at home."

"Don't worry. I'd find a way."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They spent a lazy afternoon, Kate reading, Rick writing a bit, and both snoozing. The party started at 4:00, and Rick wanted to get there right away, of course. It was casual, but Rick obviously couldn't wear his baseball cap disguise, so just the sunglasses would have to do. Kate dressed in a pair of stretchy capri pants with a ruffly, but somewhat midriff-baring, summer shirt, and of course, strappy sandals with high heels.

They walked into the party and found seats at one of the little tables that placed around the area at the edge of the dance floor. The live band hadn't started yet, of course, so a DJ was playing some decades-old soft rock. Not too many people were dancing yet, so they just sat down at one of the shaded tables and watched people mill around.

"Drink?" Rick asked.

"Not quite yet, thanks. I don't know what I'm in the mood for...fruity and beachy? Or more normal? Hmmmm..."

"Can you believe we've been here a week? It was a week ago today that we had chinese for lunch and you, uh, never really made it back to the precinct."

"In some ways, it seems like a lot longer, like when you figure in alligator adventures and bad Bieber imitations. But overall, I guess it has been a little fun. I suppose it could have been worse though. I'm not really sure how exactly, but I know that if anyone could make something into more of an adventure, it would be you." She gave him a dry look, which he responded to with a cheeky smile.

"So anyway, you never really told me what you wanted to do down here," Rick observed. "We still have a week, and there's a lot we can still do. Fishing? Parasailing?" he suggested.

Still looking around at people milling around, she appeared as if she was considering what he was saying.

Looking at him, she exclaimed, "I know! It's perfect! Sex on the Beach!"

Rick's head whipped around toward her so fast that Kate thought he'd get whiplash. "Beckett?" he exclaimed.

She grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the chair. "That's what I want."

Rick let out a cough as he tried to pull her back down. "What, HERE? NOW?"

"Of course. It's perfect. And I'm getting thirsty," she finished, wondering just how long it would take his mind to go from the literal meaning of her words to the drink of the same name.

One...two...three...and then he dipped his head to the side and gave her a look. "Beckett, really."

"What's wrong? You asked what I wanted to drink. So I told you." she defended herself, with a flirty smile.

"Totally out of context, I might add, but I'm sure that was your intention. Excuse me while I get your drink. I think I need one myself now anyway," he muttered as he walked toward the bar.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They ate, they drank, and they were merry. Kate was feeling pleasantly buzzed from the drinks, and she and Rick danced and laughed until well after the sun went down. It was a fun party, and both of them got a good laugh when they spotted Billy and Ginny on the other side of the dance floor. During the slow songs, it looked like Ginny was getting her wish of getting all snuggly with Billy, and they surmised that the younger couple had patched things up.

Rick wasn't a bad dancer for the faster songs, and more often than not, he'd hear an older song being played and she'd find her arm being suddenly grabbed while she heard him exclaim "I used to _love_ this song!" as he pulled her out on the dance floor. After him doing this several times, she started doing the same thing for the slow songs, but to keep things a little more interesting, she made up stories about each song, like she danced to it with a certain guy at a school dance before they slipped away and made out in a stairwell. His reactions were so priceless, and after a while he caught on and started weaving the stories with her, even making up a few of his own.

It was all fun, at least until she saw some bleached blond hanging on him when she came back from a trip to the restroom. He was being his charming self, which involved a certain amount of inherent flirtiness, but most women didn't understand that he was like that with just about every female on the planet. The blond obviously didn't, because she started hanging more and more on Rick, who couldn't really extricate himself at that particular moment because he had just been to the bar to get new drinks, so he hands were already occupied holding the drinks and there was nowhere in the immediate vicinity to set them down. Kate stood and watched for a minute or two, somewhat bothered by what she saw until she fully assessed the situation and determined that the blond was really a drunken leech. She walked over to them slowly, and when Rick saw her, his face went from relieved to scared as he realized Kate was seeing him with the blond draped all over him. When one of the blond's hands moved from around his neck down toard his pants, Kate decided enough was enough. She very gently but determinedly grabbed the blond's arm that was about to feel Rick up and applied pressure to the right spot in her arm, making it go temporarily numb. Without missing a beat, she took one of the drinks from his outstretched hand and leaned close to him to kiss him on his lips. Then she looked at the blond and said "Taken," in a tone that let the blond know she meant business. The blond released her other arm from around Rick's neck, gave Kate an annoyed look, mouthed 'bitch' at Kate and walked away, still slapping her other arm to try to get the feeling to return to it.

Rick grabbed Kate with his now-free arm and hauled her to him for another kiss. "Thank you," he said.

"Sure you don't want another try at her?" Kate asked, only half joking.

Rick picked up on the slight serious question, and the uncertainty in her tone. He tightened his arm around her waist. He looked right in her beautiful eyes and told her "Not a chance. I have everything I want right here, everything I could ever want. She can't hold a candle to you. Nobody can. You're amazing," he finished, dropping a tender kiss on her lips. "Okay?"

There was that funny feeling back in her belly, beating away the jealousy and uncertainty that had been residing there only moments earlier. She nodded.

Then she said "Give me that drink." She downed it and he did the same with his. Then they headed toward the dance floor just as Rick said "I just _love_ this song!"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

It was after 10:00, and the party was still going strong. They chatted with people here and there, and the blond always made sure to give her a dirty look if they happened to be within ten feet of her. She and Rick had gotten closer over the evening, and they were rarely apart at all. If they weren't wrapped around each other for the slow dances, they were snuggled together in chairs set off to the side. They had been sitting for a while so when the band played a slower romantic ballad, they both got up by mutual consent and made their way onto the dance floor before locking themselves back together closely.

Her head was spinning, from the drinks, from the song, from dancing close to Rick, so close that even the fog from the machine couldn't find a spare millimeter of space between them. She touched her cheek to his lower jaw as they swayed to the music and she listened to the words of the song. She hadn't really listened to the lyrics of a lot of the other songs, but she did for this one: Foreigner's 'I want to know what love is'.

_"I wanna know what love is  
I want you to show me  
I wanna feel what love is  
I know you can show me"_

She did. She wanted to feel love. But with love, came heartache. With love, came the person who couldn't accept you as you were, who wanted to make you into something different than what you inherently were. Something that could be loved by that person, even though the new, different person wasn't really _you _anymore. You had to bend to their will. And in doing that, if you acquiesced to that other person, you lost the person that you had ever been in the first place.

_"I'm gonna take a little time  
A little time to look around me,  
_

She felt his arms tighten around her, whether because of the music, or 'just because', she didn't know. But she still relaxed, or tried to relax, into his embrace. That fluttery feeling was back in her belly. They really hadn't been a couple, in a traditional sense for very long; really only a few days. How could she feel all of these feelings, this ease of being 'together', after only a few days?

But really, it hadn't been just a few days, had it? Everything that had happened, seemingly so fast, in the last few days had really been several years in the making. They had _done_ the whole 'getting-to-know-you' thing that other couples did, but she and Rick just did it without the typical physical shows of affection.

_I've got nowhere left to hide  
It looks like love has finally found me"_

In reality, her mind was still spinning. She really couldn't hide from him anymore. He was right here, and he was holding her. He wasn't going anywhere. He was just...there, as he had been for the last several years, whenever she'd needed him (well, except for that whole Hamptons debacle last summer, but that was over and put to rest, thank goodness). Even when she hadn't thought she'd needed him, he'd still been there for her. Unbidden, she looked up at his face and found him gazing at her intently. This song...the words seemed to be speaking to her.

_"In my life there's been heartache and pain  
I don't know if I can face it again  
I can't stop now, I've traveled so far  
To change this lonely life"_

Oh, yeah, the song was speaking to her. She certainly knew heartache. The pain. She lived with it every day...it was always there, in the back of her mind, in the back of her heart. She kept that part of her closed off from everyone around her. But yet, Castle pushed his way in. Pushed, prodded, annoyed and lingered. She told him to get out, but he stayed there. And damn her for it, but when it was all said and done, she was glad he had been there, glad that he'd pushed, glad that he'd prodded, even though it had been awful at the time, and really, really glad that he'd lingered. She was glad that he knew what she went through, when precious few other people did. She was glad that he know when to just...be there. And nothing else.

_"I wanna know what love is_  
_I want you to show me_  
_I wanna feel what love is_  
_I know you can show me_  
_I wanna know what love is_  
_I want you to show me_  
_And I wanna feel, I want to feel what love is_  
_And I know, I know you can show me_

_Let's talk about love_  
_(I wanna know what love is) the love that you feel inside_  
_(I want you to show me) I'm feeling so much love..."_

She listened to the lyrics, and with a hitch in her breathing, she wondered if what she was feeling inside was...love.

The song went on without her, but she was stuck on that one word. Love.

Love.

Love?

_Love._

For Rick Castle.

Oh, my God, she thought, how could she have done this? She _can't_ love Castle. It could never work...they were too different. No, no, no! If she loved him, the the heartache would be right around the corner. She looked up at him now, almost panicked.

He looked down at the woman in his arms, who had gone through such an abrupt change in the small span of a minute or two. He could feel the tension creep into her muscles suddenly as he held her, and he didn't understand it. Sure, it was a romantic song, but they had already danced to several of them. "Kate?" he started to ask her what was wrong, what he could do to help.

She pulled away, almost jerking from his embrace. Getting more alarmed, he said "Kate, what's wrong?"

She could hardly formulate any words; her voice felt thick and lodged in her chest. Finally, on a breathy whisper, she told him "I need to take a walk. No, alone," she clarified to him as she saw that he was going to come with her. "No, just stay here. Or go back to the house. I'll be fine. I...I need to think. Just don't follow me," she said, starting to back away. "Don't follow me. Do you hear me, Castle? Don't follow me!"

She turned and tried to maintain some semblance of walking away, when all she really wanted to do was run.

And Rick watched her walk away, wondering what had just happened. He so wanted to go after her, but he knew that he couldn't...not with Kate. And he stood on the dance floor alone, watching the retreating back of this woman who was coming to mean more to him with every passing day, feeling some pieces chip off of his heart with every step that she took away from him.

_**

* * *

**_

There it is. I'll blame the ending on the fact that maybe I'm feeling a little angsty after seeing that certain spoiler picture for the January episode...an episode that we won't be able to see for over a month! However will I wait that long?

_**I hope the cosmic banter and innuendo wasn't too weird. I wrote the one line about launching and liftoff and then it just kind of blew up from there. And I hope I didn't bug people with the frequent italics, but I wanted to give a bit more emphasis to the innuendo in the situation so I hope it worked and didn't annoy.**_

_**This little beach party was originally going to happen one (virtual) day later, but you wonderful people have been reading and following this story for so long that I decided to not make you wait any longer.**_

_**I think the next chapter will be challenging for me to write, so it will probably take several days, but I will try very hard to have it posted by the middle of the weekend.**_

_**Now, the usual...thoughts? Reviews are always greatly appreciated! (Please?)**_


	23. Chapter 23

_**The last chapter got the most reviews of any chapter that I've ever written with such a wealth of detailed comments, that I wanted to thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I get such a charge out of seeing all of your comments, and I love it that you all seem to love my story so much! I realize I probably sound like a broken record, but I really do appreciate the reviews and want to thank you all. I'm also humbled that I'm still getting new Favorite alerts and Story alerts...it's just freaking awesome to know that so many people are liking what I write! **__**So here's the next chapter, about a full day earlier than what I had planned. I didn't go as far as I thought I would with this one, but that just leaves more Casketty goodness for future chapters, right? At least I think I ended it somewhat decently.**_

_**This chapter turned out a bit more angsty than I had originally intended, and it got a lot longer in terms of the thoughts that each were thinking. They were both reeling and were really unnerved by what had happened at the party-Kate by being buzzed by the drinks and letting her guard down, and having the sudden realization of the depth of her feelings, and Rick by her pulling away and then running away after they had been growing so much closer over the last few days. She was freaked, and he was stunned. She's been denying her feelings for him, so when she realized that it was the big L word that she was feeling, it all came crashing down on her. I hope I can convey that and explain her POV without it being overkill.**_

_**Disclaimer: No, I don't own any of the characters, but I think they're awesome!**_

* * *

After watching her walk, practically run away from him, Rick made his way back to the table and sat down heavily in the chair. Kate's drink was still sitting there, half full. He reached over and picked it up, and then dumped the rest of the drink into a potted plant sitting behind him. He watched the liquid soak into the dirt around the plant, and the storyteller in him couldn't help but making the comparison to his feelings...right now he felt like all of the good feelings that he'd felt over the last week were leaking out of him and were soaking into the dirt too, and he was left with nothing but emptiness inside, just like the glass.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate walked out of the party as fast as she could without running. When she got out of the main area, in the cover of dark and some decorations, she risked a look in back of her. She saw Rick, still standing where they were when they were dancing, just looking forlorn. She still could hardly catch her breath, and she knew the panic that she felt at the realization of her feelings was still very much there. She couldn't go back in, no matter how much it hurt her to see him like that. She needed some distance. She needed time to think.

She forced herself to look away, and she made her feet walk. She found herself on an outside path weaving through buildings, and before long she realized that she was headed toward the beach. When she reached the beach, she took off her shoes and carried them, walking at a snail's pace through the sand. She walked slowly for a quite a while, her mind a jumbled mess of memories of them together; during cases, playing poker, out for drinks, at the precinct. Eventually, when she didn't know how long she'd been walking, she spotted a few isolated beach chairs. Suddenly needing to sit down, she collapsed onto the end of one of the chairs.

She closed her eyes and listened to the crash of the waves, forcing herself to breathe deeply and just concentrate on the sound. It was somewhat rhythmic, and after several minutes she could feel some of the panic and tension start to ease.

She loved him. She loved Rick Castle. She was _in love with_ Rick Castle. Oh, Lord.

And she'd run out on him, had just left him standing there. Despite everything, she knew he'd be worried about her. She pulled out her phone and looked at it, to find that while on silent mode, she hadn't known that he'd texted her seven times. She didn't bother to read them, but knew they were him wondering if she was all right. God, this whole thing wasn't fair to him. She texted him back quickly, and she hoped he would take the words to heart:

"_I'm ok. sorry I ran out. don't wait up. don't worry. -K"_

Why was she feeling like this? Love wasn't such an unfamiliar concept. People loved other people all the time. She had loved before. So what was the big deal for her now? She loved her parents, of course. She loved her friends. She'd loved Will. But Will...had he loved her, really loved her? He wanted her, sure. The sex was good. He was charming. They had a good time together, when they were together. But then he got the transfer, and he'd expected her to move when he moved. To give up her life for his. She was a New York girl; she wouldn't have been happy uprooting herself for him, giving up her job, her friends, her city. And she'd realized, luckily in time, that he probably didn't love her that much, really _love_ her, if he could ask her to give up everything-just assume that she would, without even a second thought.

Something like that does a number on you. You want to be loved for yourself, but then you realize that the 'you' is slowly disappearing as the other person takes over. After Will was gone, she could see how they come to that. Everything slowly, over time, became about him, about his wants, his life, his career, his everything. She didn't realize it at the time, until she had her epiphany when he got the transfer. And she was careful to not let that happen again.

She'd dated after Will, but none of those guys really sparked her interest past a few dates. And a lot of them seemed a little scared of her. Or when it came down to it, some of them seemed so outright dismissive of her and her job that she knew she couldn't handle that either. And if someone could not muster even a modicum of respect for what she did, and by association, for her, then that person wasn't worth her time. It needed more than just 'oh, you're a cop? Cool. Now let's talk about me...' She was not going to fight for someone's attention, and she was not going to be used just to provide an ego boost for someone. That was bullshit, and she didn't have time in her life for bullshit. Screw that.

But then she met Richard Castle, author of a stream of best-sellers, books that she'd loved. And then he'd used his connections to insinuate himself into her work life. She was annoyed...so incredibly annoyed with him and with the universe for sticking him with her. She thought he was full of BS too. He flirted shamelessly, even propositioned her, but of course she said no because she wasn't going to be _his_ ego boost or his latest flavor of the week, no matter how much she liked his books. But after being saddled with him, she found after a while that he was useful. He had a different way of looking at things, and she began to see how, strangely enough, they worked well together. Lack of respect was never an issue with him; he had enough respect for her job that he often seemed in awe of it. In awe of _her_. Mentally, he could keep up with her, and he made her really think outside of the box, consider other theories. And even though he was often messing around, was often annoying, and was often inappropriate, he was also often outrageous, often helpful and was almost always fun. And he grew on her.

Even though she didn't want him to, and got royally mad when he did, he looked into her mother's case. And eventually, that information led them a little closer to the answers she'd been searching for. And Coonan...she killed that bastard to save Rick. He wasn't going to take someone else from her.

They grew a little closer after that, but then because she couldn't acknowledge the blooming feelings, didn't want to recognize them, it all went downhill after that. She got together with Demming to bug Rick, but she ended up hurting him, although she didn't know it at the time. She thought that on that level, Rick was too superficial to be hurt. When he was in the Hamptons, she missed him. She'd grown so used to having him around that when he wasn't around anymore, there was a void. There was for everyone, but mostly for her. Sure, she dated, and it was a nice distraction. Josh was a nice distraction, and she really liked him. At one point, she thought maybe he could be the one for her, but that was before Rick came back.. But for reasons she was only now beginning to understand, their relationship seemed to get more superficial after Rick had been back and worked a few cases with them. She and Josh started to drift apart, whereas she and Castle seemed to get closer together. Not physically, of course, but they were still in tune with each other and just seemed...closer. But even with all of that, she just only let her mind think of him as the author who was following her around, helping them all out with their cases.

She loved him. Wow.

She let the thought sink in again, and she felt a less of the panic that she'd felt earlier. How long those feelings had been there, without her realizing what they were? Were they there when Castle went to the Hamptons? She knew they were, in some form; that's why she was hit so hard when he walked out with Gina. What about when he came back and they started to work together again? The first case, when she arrested him...she almost lost it in the hallway of the precinct, almost outright yelled at him to go away. And then he wanted to come back, and she actually _let_ him come back. Just like Esposito said in his letter to her: she let him win the bet. She let him win so he would stay around. She began to think that maybe he wasn't so superficial after all. Even though she was dating Josh, she wanted him around, even though she would never have admitted it, even though she didn't really want to think of why that was.

She got up and started walking down the beach, lost in her thoughts of their history together. All of the cases that they had worked, all of the innuendo now flowed through her mind. They had been doing this dance for so long, that it was hard to remember what it was like before he became part of her life, more than through just his books.

Even when they all came so close to losing him to the Triple Killer, she still couldn't fully admit to herself how she felt about him. But now, thinking back on it, she'd bet that she was in deep by then. She still remembered her feelings, the knots in her belly as they drove to the hotel once they figured out who the Triple Killer really was. The cop in her knew there was a good chance she wouldn't find him alive. She realized it now...when she broke down the door, she immediately went for Rick. She knew Ryan was there too, but she was focused on Rick, and only Rick. Even when she found out that Rick was OK and Ryan was hurt, she still stayed with Rick. She'd told him that she was glad he was OK, but really, that didn't even begin to touch on the sheer, almost paralyzing sense of relief that she felt when she found him alive. Recognizing and remembering the feelings now, she came to the sudden conclusion that the feelings were definitely there then, although she'd been in too much denial to realize it at the time.

She loved him.

Rick Castle: famous author, millionnaire, playboy, man-child, king of the innuendo, wonderful father, caring human being. She was at first intimidated by the first two, put off by the third, annoyed by the fourth, humored and challenged by the fifth and intrigued by the last two. And now, it seemed, she loved all of them. Well, maybe not the playboy. Something was going to have to change there.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick was eventually forced to leave the party. He'd finally had to resign himself to the fact that she wasn't coming back. He just hoped that she was OK. He clung to the hope that since he knew she was street savvy, and this wasn't even New York, that she'd be OK. He drove slowly back to the house, gazing the side streets as he drove, desperate for any sign of her. He'd already texted her countless times before he left the party, but he hadn't gotten any response. He'd gotten more desperate with his texts with each successive one that he sent, but he didn't care how pitiful he sounded, he just needed to know she was OK, especially after she left the way she did. He held the phone in his hand as he drove; it had been in his hand since he first texted her.

He pulled into the driveway of the house, turned off the car and just sat. His mind was a jumble of thoughts of her. He still couldn't figure out why it had gone so terribly wrong...what had he done to make her run away from him?

He almost jumped as his phone vibrated in his hand. He looked at it and saw he had a text from Kate. He read the text and sagged with relief back against the seat. She was OK. But she gave him nothing else, no other information except for a polite apology and a command not to wait up for her, like she was merely some random houseguest.

He had the worst feeling in the pit of his stomach-that they were done. Things were going so well between them, better than he'd dreamed. She was better than he'd dreamed. She was real, and but more than that, they were actually together. It wasn't just a fantasy any more. In some form, he'd loved the fantasy for a long time, because he could never have the real thing. She never looked at him in that light. He'd always just had to settle for loving her as Nikki, through Rook. But the reality, the flesh and blood Kate-she was never his, not until these last few days. And after they went out for ice cream and snuggled on the couch to fall asleep, he'd known. When she leaned up to give him that oh-so-sweet goodnight kiss, he'd felt that she was finally his, and knew that the love he felt was for the reality, not for the fantasy.

But whatever had developed between them, he felt it all slipping away from him now. He'd wanted to give her some more time to get used to the idea of them being _together_, before he made any grand declarations. But it looked like he lost his chance.

He walked into the house and poured himself a shot of brandy. Chugging it back, he looked around the darkened house. He couldn't stand the shadows and the depressing look of the dark, so he went around the house, turning on every light that he could find. Then he went back to the bar poured himself another shot, finally just picking up the glass and the bottle and taking them out on the deck. He kicked off his shoes and sat down in one of the lounge chairs and tried to will the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach to go away.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Now, as she walked in the waves on the shore, she had to think about what she wanted. Everything had changed on that dance floor. Well, no, not exactly...she had just woken up on that dance floor. She hated to admit it, but she was feeling the buzz of the drinks, and she just let her mind go. When her mind wasn't at its sharpest, she wasn't able to maintain the protective denial that she was such an expert at doing. She'd found out in the last week that there were sparks between them on a romantic level, but now she knew there was so much more to it, at least on her end. And what was on his end? She hoped that she was more than the flavor of the week. No, she _knew_ that she was more to him than that, recalling his words when she had gotten rid of the blond leech at the party. But she didn't know how much more she was. Could she trust him?

She thought of how he'd been since they'd been here, in the few days since they'd kissed and become more involved. She thought of the night after they'd been cornered by the alligator, when he'd admitted to being consumed by just being around her. It seemed he was making comments like that more and more lately, but they didn't sound like classic pick-up lines. They sounded sincere, and she so wanted to believe that they were. That _he_ was sincere. And she remembered the fluttery feeling in her stomach at the time he made the comment, knowing now what it was, because her stomach had felt that same way ever since she'd realized that she loved him.

She looked the further down the beach, toward where she knew the house was. She pulled out her phone and found that it was now after one thirty in the morning. She'd been gone for well over three hours? At least she was calm now. The solitude had been good for her, but she regretted that it had to happen the way it did, with her freaking out. It was so unlike her to freak out over anything. But then again, if she were to freak out over something, she supposed that, especially to someone not good with feelings and emotions, the sudden realization that you were in love with the man who had been around you for almost three years was something that would do it. And not just that you were in love with him, but the further realization that you probably had been for some time. Things had been really changing between them for the last several months, but she could kick herself now for being too stubborn to see it.

As she walked, she noticed some lights off to the side past the beach, an incredible beacon of light among all of the darker houses. As she got closer, she realized that it was their house. Rick must have turned on every light in the house, and now it seemed that it was like a lighthouse to guide her back to him. Seeing that, all of her doubts and most of the lingering nervousness drained away. She was ready to face him. She was ready to bare all. She was ready to love Rick. She just hoped that sometime, at some point, he could love her back.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He heard the noise on the steps to the deck, the softest whisper of steps climbing up the deck, mixed in with the sound of the waves. He saw her head rise above the steps, her eyes scanning around as she climbed the steps. When her eyes locked on his, he stood up.

He looked at her, drinking in the sight of her like he was dying of thirst and she was a glass of ice water. She looked fine, thank God. She looked more than fine, in fact; she looked wonderful. But that made the ache in his chest worse, because she didn't want him. She'd run away from him. Unconsciously, he walked a few steps toward her, and but then stopped as he realized what he was doing. He didn't want her to run again. He didn't know if he could take that.

The look on his face was like a kick in her stomach; how utterly concerned he was for her well-being and how relieved he looked now that she was standing in front of him in one piece. She also felt like the proverbial horse's behind for doing that to him. He'd been nothing but wonderful to her, and then she had to go and run away from him because of it, because her own stupid defense mechanisms hadn't let her see what was in front of her. Somehow, now that she was more calm, the whole thing was ridiculous, save for the amount of hurt that she had obviously caused him.

"I'm sorry," she tried to explain, but then stopped because it just felt so inadequate.

He took another baby step toward her. He looked beaten. Gone was the cocky Rick that she had grown to know the past several years. Well, she thought then, she might as well get used to it, even if only in her own mind, so she amended her thought: the cocky Rick that she had grown to know _and love_ these past several years. When he started talking, his voice was low, and unsure. "I know you probably don't want...it's just..." He held open his arms a little bit, a request and an invitation for her to step inside them. "Just for a minute? Please? It doesn't have to mean anything...I just need to feel that you're whole and OK. Then you can go again. Please?" he asked again.

And if she had any lingering doubts as to whether or not he was more than just superficially involved with her, well, all she had to do was take a look at his face and hear the tone of his voice to get her answer. How could she resist a plea like that? Especially when in his arms was the only place she really wanted to be anyway? She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his back, her face buried in his neck. "I don't want to go," she said against his neck. That fluttery feeling was back in her belly, but the difference was that this time she knew what it was.

He wrapped his arms around her and held on tightly to her, like he was drowning and she was a life preserver. She felt so good there, he thought. He tried to memorize this moment, take a snapshot of the feeling he felt now as she was in his arms. Despite the words that he had just felt and heard her utter into his neck, he knew that this really could be it. This could be the last time he would hold her, and he wanted to have that memorized feeling to take out and savor when he didn't have her anymore.

Finally, after giving her a kiss on her hair that he couldn't resist doing, he reluctantly unwrapped his arms from her and set her away from him a bit. He took a deep breath as he looked at her. "Are we done?" He felt almost ill as he said the words, but they had to be said, the question had to be asked and brought out in the open. "I _can_ take a hint, you know. When a woman tells you she 'needs time' and tells you not to follow her...I get it. But just tell me what I did to make you run like that. I'm so sorry for whatever it was, but I honestly don't know. Call me stupid, call me an ass, but I really just don't know. If I could go back..."

"Castle, shut up."

"No, Kate. I've sat here for the last God knows how many hours, just wondering how it went so wrong. You were so close to me, and then all of a sudden you just pushed away and you couldn't stand to be near me. I did something. And if by some miracle it's not too late, then I want to try to fix it. And if I can't fix it, then well..." Agitated, he ran a hand through his hair. "Then I want to at least know what I did so I can offer you a proper apology. Because never, ever did I or do I want to cause you any hurt. All I wanted was you."

She was touched, she was humbled. She felt awful for what he looked like he was going through, because of her. So she tried to put the blame on herself, where it should be anyway. "It wasn't you, it was me."

He let out a sudden laugh, but it wasn't really a laugh at all. "So now you're gracing me with the classic break up line? Spare me, Beckett."

"Castle, just shut up and stop jumping to conclusions or so help me, I'm going to pinch your ear until you're screaming 'uncle' in six different languages."

He ran both hands through his hair and scrubbed them over his face. "Okay, what?"

He walked over to the edge of the deck and leaned his arms on the railing. She didn't know exactly where to start, or even how to proceed. But she had to start somewhere, so she just dove in, right where it all started.

"Castle, what were we doing when I freaked out and ran away?"

"Uh...dancing?"

"And the song? Do you remember the song?"

"Sure, It was Foreigner."

"The _name_ of the song, Rick?"

"I Want to Know What Love Is." He looked out at the waves. As he said the name of the song, something stirred in Rick's chest. He squashed it down again quickly before it could even form a thought more north, in his brain. And then, when she said her next words, he began to think he wasn't capable of rational thought at all.

Here it was, the moment of truth. "Rick, the song made sense."

He let her words sink in for one full second, before his memory flashed back to so many months ago, when Alexis had started dating Ashley and he'd asked Kate "How do you know when you're in love?" She'd replied off-handedly "All the songs make sense."

The song made sense.

He froze. Well, that was partially true. His limbs froze, but his heart felt like it was beating out of his chest. And he turned, ever so slowly, to look at her. He noticed that her eyes seemed to be glistening more than normal, the muted outside lights around the deck bathing her face in soft shadows.

"Aren't you going to say something?" she asked, and he detected the slightest bit of uncertainty in her voice.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked softly, still not quite believing what he was hearing, what he _wanted_ to be hearing, needing more confirmation from her.

"That you know what I mean."

"I remember when I asked you a question, and that was your answer. And I know what I want you to mean, but after what just happened at the party, I'm thinking that's way off base."

"We do have communication problems, don't we?" Kate asked. "I'll explain what happened at the party later. But for now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and try just simple and straightforward. This is new for me, on a personal level anyway, so bear with me." She took a deep breath and looked right into his eyes. "_I love you."_

He stared at her, once again back to not moving a muscle. "No way," he finally replied in a soft but disbelieving tone, shaking his head slightly.

She nodded softly and said it again. "I love you, Rick." It really did get easier the more you said it, she thought. Not only that, but she was amazed at how her mood lightened almost instantaneously at just getting it 'out there' and telling him. Confession really was good for the soul.

She looked at him, and his eyes seemed to be glistening with emotion, like she imagined hers were. He held up his left arm and motioned for her her to come closer with his fingers. "Um, could you..."

"Oh, yeah," she said, stepping toward him and into his embrace with no hesitation whatsoever. He wrapped his outstretched arm around her and brought his other hand up to her face. He gazed into her eyes with a new intensity before touching his lips lightly to hers in a tender kiss.

He pulled his lips away from hers and brought her into a full embrace as he tried to take a few deep breaths to calm his erratically beating heart. He buried his face in her hair and breathed deeply, drinking in her scent, just holding her close while still wondering just a bit if this was real or if it was just some awfully realistic dream that would soon vanish when the alarm clock went off. "Please tell me that you really just said what I thought you did." he whispered against her ear.

She shivered at the feeling of his hot breath against her ear. "I did," she replied softly against his shoulder. "I love you. And it's true what they say about it getting easier the more you say it."

"So maybe you're planning on saying it a lot, since it's so easy?"

"I just might."

He took another deep breath and said shakily, "So do think it might be an appropriate time for me to say I love you too? I mean, you won't shoot me or anything for getting overly personal, will you?"

At his words, specifically four of them, she tightened her hold on him and took an unsteady gulp of air as she buried her forehead in his shoulder. In her muffled answer, she could hear her voice hitch with emotion. "No gun, remember? So I think you're safe." She now had her answer about how he felt about her, and now that she had realized and embraced her feelings for him, the reality of knowing that he felt the same was so much more wonderful than she could have imagined.

By the way she snuggled closer and hid her face in the corner between his neck and shoulder, and the couple of times he felt her chest heave against his, he suspected that she was probably trying to hold back some tears and was embarrassed by them. But he didn't care. He wanted-needed-to see her face, to look into her eyes. He pulled back slightly and put a finger under her chin, lifting her face to look at him. She did have tears in her eyes, but then again, he did too. "I love you, Kate. So much." Then he took his finger and wiped a tear away from her cheek, as she reached around his head and, with a shy, tentative smile, returned the tender action, wiping a tear from his cheek with the pad of her thumb. Finally, letting their teary eyes drift shut, they both leaned forward until their lips met in another gentle kiss.

_**

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**_

Don't know if I was descriptive enough, but the embrace and the kiss immediately after she said ILY was a shout-out to the spoiler picture, except, of course, for the fact that in my story, she embraced him too.

_**Like I said in the beginning, the chapter was kind of angsty and had a lot of 'thoughts', but I hope it was OK. I tried to explain the rationale for her freaking out and how her little freak-out affected Rick, since he's known the depth of his feelings for longer that her, on some level anyway. And I figured that if Castle can get teary about a bottle of booze (Last Call), he'd just HAVE to get at least a little teary when the woman of his dreams tells him she loves him.**_

_**I'm already working a little bit on the next chapter, and I think it's going to be Mmmm-mmmm good, if you catch what I mean. ;-) ;-)**_

_**And as always, please leave a review and let me know what you think.**_


	24. Chapter 24

_**Thank you to everyone for all of the truly wonderful, awesome and highly complimentary reviews on the last chapter. Eventually, I ended up being really happy with the way the chapter turned out, and I'm glad you all seemed to like it too.**_

_**I have some bad news for anyone who is young...with this chapter, this story is going to an M rating. There is just absolutely no way to get away with a T rating anymore. So if any of you don't like smut or sex, then please don't read past the first section break.**_

_**Disclaimer: Do not own anyone. **_

_**(FYI to those of you who like longer chapters; this is the second longest chapter of this story.)**_

_**And now, without further ado, here it is! Hope you enjoy!**_

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They stood for a long time, holding each other, as the waves crashed in the background. No words needed to be said; they just needed to stand together, holding each other, and getting used to the new emotions that were flowing through them. Finally, they pulled away from each other, but not too far. She gave him a tentative smile and reached down for his hand. "Come on," she urged, turning him around so they were standing side by side, "let's go sit and I'll tell you a little story."

"A bedtime story, Detective?" he asked softly. Although he didn't waggle his eyebrows like she would have normally expected, she did hear the teasing tone to his voice.

"No." She led him over to one of the lounge chairs and pushed him down. She needed to get this out, to clear the air and try to make him understand because she still felt badly about the whole thing. She sat next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder as she took one of his hands and held it between hers on her lap. "It's a story about this woman who was forced to work with this guy," she began. "He was _so_ annoying at first," she sneaked a sidelong glance at him and smiled when she saw his pouty face. "But then, after a while, he kind of got under her skin. And they kept working together for a few years, and eventually he began to grow on her. Only she didn't know how much he was growing on her. She just had no idea. All of the feelings were buried pretty deep, and she didn't like to let them out very much in general, to keep from getting hurt. And especially with this guy, because he liked the ladies and she wasn't going to settle for being the flavor of the week. It was a defense mechanism for her, you know?" He nodded. "But then this guy kidnapped her and took her on a fabulous vacation, and one night she drinks a little too much, and then blam! Her mind was a little loose from the alcohol and she realized that she actually loved the guy. Real, full-blown, head-over-heels, mushy feelings and all of that stuff. And it totally freaked her out, to the point where she was this close to having a full-blown panic attack."

"The thought of loving me gave you a panic attack? Geez, Beckett. While I've always hoped that you'd be moved by me emotionally, a panic attack isn't really the kind of emotion that I'd imagined generating in you."

She patted the back of his hand. "Sorry, Rick, I know it's probably a blow to your ego, but that's what happened. That's why I ran out." She still needed to let him know, jokes or no jokes. "Once I realized it, I just had to get away from you until I could digest everything, come to terms with it. It hit me from out of nowhere and pretty much leveled me. And I meant it when I said that it was all me; you didn't do anything, except for somehow make me fall in love with you, although I'm still not quite sure how it happened."

"My magical, irresistable, super-ninja powers of instilling in others some extreme measures of love, adoration and devotion to me?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "Sure. Whatever you say. Just so long as you don't use those powers on anyone else. I don't share well. I guess I'm like Billy in that respect." She affected a Billy-voice, actually a decent impression of him. "Kate don't share."

Rick closed his eyes and cringed. "Now _that_ was just creepy. Please, I promise you can have me all to yourself if you will never, ever do that again."

She leaned into him, turning her head to press a kiss to his shoulder. "Deal."

"Rick?" she said softly a few minutes later.

"Hmmm?"

"I really am sorry. I know I hurt you when I ran out of there and I really never meant to. I wish now that I could have found a better way to get my head on straight."

He was silent for a moment, considering what she said, and thinking of how to respond. "Things happen for a reason, Kate. If it hadn't happened like that, would we be sitting here right now, finally knowing each other's true feelings? With our history, I'd bet not. I was trying to be good and hold myself back until you were comfortable with the concept of 'us'...not pressure you into anything. And if you had realized your feelings any other way, you probably would have just kept them bottled up for longer and we would have just kept dancing around each other. Right?" He could feel her nod against his shoulder. "So this way, you freaking out just put everything out into the open and forced you to think about it. It was definitely not fun for me to go through-don't get me wrong-but the end result is so much better than I would have ever imagined, so yeah, for this kind of a payoff, I'd say it was worth it." He turned and kissed the top of her head that was still laying on his shoulder.

They sat there in silence for a while, just enjoying the night and each other's company. During that time, a thought began to form in her head; something, she decided with a mental start, that she wanted to do, _needed_ to do. Now she just had to get rid of Rick for a little while.

She yawned loudly and stood up. "It's really pretty late, and I'm wiped out. I think I'm going to turn in." She leaned down and gave him a light kiss.

As she raised up, she caught the brief look of confusion in his eyes before he masked it out. She knew he'd probably assumed that they'd naturally take their relationship to the next level...in the bedroom. She made a quick decision to not acknowledge the look, or the implied expectation, at all. Playing dumb or ignorant was not something she liked to do, but was something that she could do if she needed to. And right now, she needed to.

He wouldn't be Rick if he didn't try. "Sure you don't need someone to tuck you in?" he asked with a roguish grin.

"Thanks, but no. It's pretty late, and I'm getting tired." But then she swiped a finger down his jawline and raised her eyebrows at him. "But we're here for another week, right?" she said as she slipped away from him.

"Definitely," he answered.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She did what she needed to do, and listened intently for the sounds of him going to his room before she slipped out of the house through her door onto the balcony. She quitely stole down to the beach after she grabbed a couple of towels. Trusting that he still had his phone with him, she texted him: "_Meet me down at the beach_."

"_Why?_" came the reply.

"_Just go with it, Castle._" she texted back to him. And then she shut her phone off and left it under cover of the beach umbrella on the table. It was good for it to have some sort of cover. If all went according to plan, she really didn't think that she'd be concentrating on the whereabouts of her phone much longer.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As instructed, Rick came down to the beach. But he wasn't really sure why. Did she change her mind about getting some shuteye and decide that she wanted to have a bonfire and roast marshmallows or something? That wouldn't be so bad, really, if he could just manage to get the fire going without using a lot of...

Holy crap, what was that in the water? Was that a person? Was that _Beckett_?

His reverie about marshmallows was interrupted as he saw the silhouette of a person far out in the surf, near the sandbar that was set away from the shore. Although he hadn't checked the tidal charts, it looked like it was low tide; the waves were really gentle-almost nonexistent-and the water seemed shallower and not as far up on the beach. There was enough moonlight to make out that there was a person there, but not much else; the person was pretty far out in the water. The mysterious person beckoned him out in the water. He knew if it was low tide, the water on the sandbar would be pretty shallow. He could see the outline of the person, silhouetted in the moonlight, the water going up to her chest. He would know her anywhere. It _was_ Kate. But what the hell was she doing taking a swim at three o'clock in the morning?

Compelled by some unnamed force and mindless of the clothes that he wore, he walked into the ocean and made his wayt toward her. He involtarily winced at the the temperature of the ocean surf as it washed over him and wet his shorts and shirt. In the night, without the warmth from the sun, the water had kind of a chilly quality to it

When he neared her, his steps slowed. She had risen up out of the water like a goddess, and was walking toward him slowly. As they neared each other, it seemed that they were both walking up on the shallow water of the sandbar. He no longer registered the gentle waves, the surf, the night. He was compelled to get to her. What did she want? Was she OK? After reluctantly leaving her the way he had, he was anxious for a chance to be near her again, even if it was in the cool ocean surf and at three o'clock in the morning. He was already thinking of some smart retort about the late night or the cold water to verbally assault her with when he reached her. It was their way-the innuendo and the verbal bantering-it was just the way they interacted, unique to them. But as he got nearer to her, the words dried up in his throat as the breath left his chest.

Through the shadowy light of the full moon, as they stopped in front of each other in the knee-deep water on the sandbar, he could see that she was wearing a bikini, one that he hadn't seen before. And it was a string bikini, with a lot of string and not much bikini, not on the top or on the bottom. And unless he was really color-blind in the moonlight, it was red.

Holy revealing swimsuit, Batman.

When she'd mentioned days ago that she had a red string bikini, he thought she was just messing with him. Obviously, she wasn't. It left very little to the imagination. He could see the water on her bare midriff glistening in the moonlight. There was a drop of water running down past her trim waist to her hip, where it would eventually meet the strings that were tied there in a sexy bow, and with their counterparts on the other hip, were the only thing that was keeping the small scrap of fabric called a bikini bottom from falling off. The two thin triangles of red fabric covering her breasts were stretched tightly over the swells, and he could see the outline where her nipples, taut from the chill of the water, protruded out. He was fixated by the shadows and the contours of what he saw in front of him, and he ached to touch her. It took everything he had in him to force his gaze back to her face.

"You lied," he said finally, surprised that he could even find his voice with her standing in front of him, looking like the direct cause of every teenage schoolboy's wet dream. Hell, she looked like something out of every fantasy that he had lately too. "You said you were tired and you wanted to go to bed." Even though it was unsaid, they could both hear the word 'alone' at the end of his statement.

"Yeah, oh well. It was just a little white lie. Or, in this case," she continued seductively, running her thumb under the edge of her bikini top, "maybe it's a red one." At the sight and sound of her, the breath whooshed out of his lungs and he found it difficult to take another. Then, her voice changed to be the epitome of a conceited, sassy, woman-in-charge. "You got a problem with little red lies, Castle?"

She didn't really wait for an answer, though. She just took a step closer to him in the water, which brought her body into close proximity with his, with just the faintest impression of touching him, and continued, "Or...are you just going to be a big boy and deal with it?"

The invitation, the challenge, was there, in her words and in the way she was pressing her body toward his. Dipping his head toward hers, he stopped right before he got to her lips. When he spoke, she could feel the breath from his words on her lips, and his eyes gazed right into hers. "You would be surprised how well this big boy can deal with little red lies, Ms. Beckett." And he lowered his mouth the rest of the way to hers.

It was not the kiss she expected when she hatched this plan in her mind. She knew how he reacted when she wore the other suit, and she expected a more intense version of that when he first saw her in this suit. But this kiss was soft, barely there, actually several small tickling, fleeting kisses; the barest hint of a taste of him that left her aching for more. During one of the small kisses, the tip of his tongue shot out and touched her top lip, causing her to involuntarily open her mouth for him. But still, he didn't deepen the kiss, but instead kept teasing her with his lips and the occasional taste of his tongue. They still only touched with their lips, but still somehow felt as if they had transcended a new level of intimacy.

She didn't know how long this leisurely kiss would go on, and while she was fully prepared to enjoy it for as long as she could, Kate was still a multitasker. She could thoroughly enjoy what his lips were doing to hers, but she could also take care of what needed to be done. And right now, Rick was wearing entirely too many clothes. Slowly her hands raised from her sides and found the buttons on Rick's shirt. She slowly started undoing them, still not touching him, only his shirt. When she reached the last button, she opened the shirt and moved her fingers to his waist. She trailed them lightly up his sides, onto his shoulders and then pulled the shirt down over his arms to let it drop in the water.

When his hands were free of the confines of the shirt, he brought them to rest on her waist and lightly pulled her toward him. Finally, she thought..._finally_ their bodies were touching. But it wasn't enough. With a small moan, she wound her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his naked chest, weaving the fingers of one hand in his hair to bring his head closer to her to deepen the kiss. When she did that, his hands didn't last long on her waist; they moved up and down her back and then reached back to caress and cup her bottom. Her skin was on fire from his touch.

When they mutually decided they needed air, they broke apart and looked at each other, both sets of eyes dark with intensity and lust. No words were spoken, but their eyes spoke volumes. Rick leaned down again and gave her a tender kiss on her lips, but then moved to her right, trailing kisses in a line down her jaw to her neck. She closed her eyes and tilted her head up to the moonlit sky, just reveling in the feeling of his lips on her skin. His hands moved around her sides toward her front, just so he could quickly skim the undersides of her breasts with his thumbs. When she felt that lightest of touches, _there_, she inhaled sharply. Then as he trailed kisses all down her neck and to her collarbone, he reached around to the back of her and slowly untied the string at the top of her neck. He reached around to the front and with agonizing slowness, peeled the still-wet bikini top down over one of her breasts, kissing his way down lower and lower, replacing the fabric with his lips as more creamy flesh was revealed by the removal of the suit. When at last he revealed the turgid peak, he took it into his mouth. His breathing was speeding up, so as he exhaled, his hot breath on her chilled nipple-followed by his hot mouth and hot tongue-was more than she was prepared for, and she let out a long, almost whimpery-sounding breath. But when he repeated his mouth's ministrations as he removed the fabric from her other breast, she couldn't stop a low moan from finally escaping her throat.

She could feel the fire in her belly getting hotter. Of their own accord, her hands reached for the waistband of Rick's shorts. Something about her movements forced him back into reality from Beckett-heaven, and he grabbed her hands, stilling their movement. "Wait," he breathed heavily. "If this is going to go farther, we have to move this party into the house. I don't...have anything here, with me now. I really wasn't expecting this when I came down here."

It took her a minute, but she found her voice, although it was low and husky when she spoke. "STDs, Rick?" He shook his head no. "No other bad little bugs?" Another negative head shake. "Me neither. And I'm on the pill. So unless you have any further objections, I'd really like to get back to our regularly scheduled program. Here. _Now._" She pulled her hands out of his grasp and found the front opening of his shorts again. She undid the button and pulled down the zipper, feeling a thrill when she felt his boxers and the hardness underneath, straining for freedom.

"Definitely no objections," Rick said, and then took a sharp breath when he felt her fingers graze against him through his boxers. "But tell me, Detective..._is this_ the regularly scheduled program?"

"Play your cards right and it could be," she muttered right before she pressed her mouth to his again. After they were undone, his shorts fell lower on his legs, into the water. Now it was just his boxers and her miniscule bikini bottom separating them, a fact that did not escape Rick, which he attempted to remedy post haste. His hands returned to her front to cup her breasts, his thumbs circling her nipples a few times before his hands moved down the sides of her body to her hips. He grabbed the ends of the strings on both sides and pulled. The bows came untied, and with another quick pull, there was no connection left to hold the bottom together, and it joined Rick's shorts and shirt in the water. Then remembering that the top still had the strap tied across the back, he quickly got rid of that to leave Kate standing there in front of him in naked glory.

He broke away from the kiss for a moment and let his eyes feast on her, still amazed that they were here, now, like this. "Wow," he said reverently, before bending his head to kiss her again

Kate pressed her naked chest to his as they kissed, tantalizingly rubbing her distended nipples against his chest before wrapping her arms around him to hold him close. But then her wandering hands reached below and she felt the last barrier between them. "No fair," she told him after tearing her mouth away from his. "You're still wearing way too much." She started trailing her own set of kisses down his neck, to his chest, and even kissed one of his nipples, following the kiss with a little nibble of her teeth. She continued further south, and Rick sucked in all of the air that he could as her hands slipped under the waistband of his boxers behind him to cup his ass and squeeze it. She'd always thought he had a nice ass, and now she knew she was right.

After her playful squeeze, she returned to her mission: divesting him of his last piece of clothing. Her hands still under his boxers and him still taking deep breaths, she bent lower as she pulled the boxers down over the back of him. With excruciating slowness, she ran her hands around to the front of him, until she reached the part of him that she sought. Kneeling on the sandbar now, her hands lightly grazed over his manhood before they left his skin, as they grabbed the waistband of the boxers and pulled it out and over his protruding shaft. Now with him free, she pushed the boxers down his legs to join his shorts as she took her tongue and ran it ever-so-lightly along the shaft from base to head.

"Holy Hell, Kate!" he exclaimed as he sucked in another breath of air. She looked up at his face then, her eyes lit by a delightful glow of female empowerment combined with sheer lust. He'd waited so long for her that the reality of her was almost more than he could stand. She could be wearing a brown paper bag and he'd think she was sexy. So having a naked Kate undressing him, with her tongue...oh, man. He instinctively stepped back a little to give himself some time before he lost it right now. He almost fell before he remembered his shorts and boxers still floating around his legs. Quickly stepping out of them, he knelt before Kate on the sandbar, the water now covering them up to their hips. He reached his hands out to touch her breasts once more, squeezing them before running his hands down her sides to her hips and pulling her toward him.

The gentle waves ebbed and flowed around them, their soft rhythm heightening the sensations that they were feeling. When they were almost skin to skin, they also found that they fit together perfectly as nature had intended, and his long rod slowly took up residence between the folds of her flesh. Feeling him _there_, the head of his shaft pressing her right where it needed to, Kate's breathing quickened. At the first touch, she moaned slightly and mumbled sexily "Oh, that's...really good." She let her eyes drift shut, her head falling forward into his his neck, as she gripped his shoulders with her hands, letting some soft whimpers escape. Knowing that she was close and wanting to prolong it for himself if he could, he began to nudge his hips forward to stroke that intimate part of her. Even in the water, he could feel her wet, hot heat where he was seated in between her folds. The feel of her was almost driving him mad, and they hadn't even been fully joined yet. It only took a few nudges of his manhood, stroking her intimately, before he began to feel the first quivers from her body letting go. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and a low moan escaped her throat. His hips kept pulsing forward, intent on taking her over the edge and giving her the pleasure that he knew was almost there for her.

She turned her head into his neck as her hips began quaking involuntarily, bringing him closer and closer to his final destination. "Rick...oh, God..." she panted into his neck. She wrapped her arms around his neck, splaying one hand on his back and the other through his hair, and she held him tightly to her. "Ohhhh," she moaned between pants of breathlessness, "...it's so...oh...Rick...oh...ohhhhh..." As the pleasurable riot on her body finally subsided into delightful aftershocks, she pressed a kiss to his neck.

"That was..." she stopped, because she didn't even know how to finish her thought.

"Totally," Rick responded, with a bit of awe in his voice, somehow knowing what she meant even if she couldn't put it into words.

Then she picked her head up off his shoulder and pressed her mouth to his. Her tongue teased, and her teeth nipped at his lip. "Now it's your turn," she said huskily against his mouth. "I want you to be in me. All the way. Now, Rick."

He needed no further invitation. As the waves bobbed gently around them, he sat back on his feet as he cupped her bottom with his hands and lifted her. She automatically spread her legs and he positioned her right above his hard rod. The anticipation was an exquisite torture for them. She could feel the tip of him right there, at her entrance. She looked right into his eyes, which were clouded over with passion, and with one thrust of her pelvis, took him inside her wet feminine heat. When he felt her, he involuntarily gave a little thrust of his own hips. Then she slowly wiggled her hips from side to side, driving him wild and seating him more deeply inside her with every little motion.

Now it was his turn to pant. His chest heaved as he croaked "Kaaaate...oh, my God, you...so wet but so tight..." He was amazed at the feeling of her totally surrounding him, how her body seemed to be made to fit him perfectly. She smiled a devilish smile as she used her internal muscles to clench more tightly around him. "Kate," he panted, "you're wicked, but...can't last...if you...keep doing that."

Although she loved this power she had over him, she wanted it to last for him, so she quieted her hips for a moment and leaned into his lips to kiss him. After several lazy kisses, she felt his hands on her hips, separating them and drawing them further apart. Her instinct was to protest, although she also instinctively knew that the payoff would soon be worth it. Sure enough, he lifted her hips until they were almost apart, but then forced himself back up and into her. With each thrust, he seemed to bury himself further and further inside her. Her legs had found their way around his waist, and she began to meet each thrust of his by clenching her leg muscles around him and drawing him even closer yet. The water around them added an extra sense of buoyancy and weightlessness, which made the all of the sensations different, but somehow much more powerful.

The feel of him inside her, with her own body stretched to accommodate him, brought back those same sensations she had just experienced. But this time, with them joined as they were, it was now even more intense. And as the motion of him going in and out of her pressed on that sensitive area of hers, Rick could feel the pressure building within her again and her breathing became more quick and ragged.

Rick continued to pump her hips as they hurtled toward the common goal. He could tell by her breathing that she was close again, and he wanted her to have that again, this time with him all the way inside her, joined as one. He had always admired her long, slender legs, and the feeling of those legs wrapped around him, drawing him closer to her with every thrust, was almost more than he could handle. His breathing was getting more shallow, and he didn't know how how much longer he could last.

Just then, she took several small gasps of air, and he could feel her internal muscles involuntarily beginning to clench around him as a cry of "Oh..._Riiiick!_" escaped her lips. Automatically, her hips speeded up their pumping action around him as her body was focused on the delicious friction of him sliding past her sensitive nub. When he heard her cry and felt her tighten around him, he couldn't hold back any more. He tightened his grip on her hips and pulled her down on him hard as his body gave up the fight to hold out. His near-shout of "God, Kate...Kate..._ohhhhh..._" mixed with hers and both of their bodies quaked and shuddered with release.

She collapsed on him, and he wrapped his arms around her to hold her tightly. She was exquisite, he thought. They were exquisite together. He never wanted to let her go. They didn't know how long they stayed like that, draped around each other, recovering from the onslaught of the sensations and emotions of knowing each other intimately for the first time.

"Wow." He didn't really know what else to say, nor did he know if he could even formulate the words right now.

"Uh huh. Definite wow," she squeaked, still coming down from her high.

"That was..."

"Oh, yeah."

He tried to find his voice. "As cliche as it might sound, do you think this would be another one of those appropriate times to tell you that I love you?" he asked, referring to the earlier conversation they had had.

Her arms tightened slightly around him and she said lazily, "Cliche or not, I can tell you that I like hearing it."

He put his hands on either side of her head and raised it to face him, looking into her eyes. "I love you." He touched his lips to hers.

After that one small kiss, she looked at him and repeated his words back to him. "I love you too."

Even though she'd originally said it first, and he'd heard her say it before, he still felt a little kick in his belly when he heard her say it now. They were sitting here, holding each other in the middle of the night, in the ocean, joined as closely as two people could be joined, after sharing an earthshattering night of passion, and Rick didn't think life could get any more perfect.

She leaned back. "So do you forgive me?" At his questioning look, she clued him in. "The little red lie I told to get you down here."

He laughed but then lowered his eyebrows in mock seriousness. "I'll not only forgive you, I'll encourage you. Feel free to lie to me-just like that-any time you want."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Rick looked around at the moonlit night, the ocean, the woman in his arms. "Have you ever thought of being a writer?"

"Huh?" she asked, wondering what on earth he was talking about.

"You were planning this when you said goodnight to me, weren't you?" She nodded with a little smile. "I knew it! So you tell me to come down here and I was thinking that you just wanted to have a bonfire and roast marshmallows or something. And then I see you, out here..." he trailed off. "But this was soooooo much better than marshmallows." Kate gave him a look as if to say _'I should hope so.'_ He continued. "Anyway, my point is that you created a scene in your head and set it up beautifully. I couldn't have done it better myself."

"Thank you, I think. Really, it was the drinks from tonight. They indirectly got us here, right? So call it paying homage to them."

The correlation dawned in his head and he smiled. "Sex on the beach."

"But no stealing this idea for a book. Rook and Nikki will NOT be boinking on a beach, got it?"

"No, I already promised the Captain," he mentioned offhandedly.

"WHAT?"

Belatedly, he realized how that sounded. "Settle down. Nothing bad. It's just that when I got the Captain's OK to do this...the time off and everything, that was one of his conditions...he made me promise not to put anything of this time in any upcoming books because whatever did or didn't happen between us should stay between us and not end up on the New York Times Bestseller list. He was looking out for you."

She thought about it for a moment. "OK, fair enough. And that was sweet of him. But I'm going to hold you to that."

"As long as you make sure to hold _yourself_ to me from time to time, I will be a very happy man."

"I think that can be arranged." They met in a gentle kiss.

After the kiss, Kate pulled away from him and slowly stood up. Rick did the same. "In part of my scene-setting, I grabbed towels," she told him. "Come on." She grabbed his hand and they started to walk slowly up on the shore. When they got to the chair with the towels, they each grabbed one and by mutual consent, started drying each other off. Rick paid special attention to drying her breasts, but the drying aspect didn't work too well when he kept bending his head to suck on her nipples, first one and then the other. As he teased her with his tongue, she felt the first embers of heat ignite in her belly. She reached down for him, to tease him a bit, like he was teasing her, and found that he was already getting hard again. Man, he had a wonderful ability to recover fast.

She closed her hand around his length. "I see you're rising to the occasion. Quite an impressive recovery time, I must say."

He reluctantly left her breasts but moved up to nuzzle her neck, which caused her to shiver a bit from his hot breath. "I'm actually a little surprised myself, but sometimes amazing things happen with the right inspiration."

She ran her hands over his back, to cup his back side again like she had before. "Should we move this inside?" she asked, breathily.

"Lead the way, milady."

So Kate did that, just not the way he intended. He sucked in his breath as she grabbed his male shaft and tugged gently, while starting to walk backwards, saying, "follow me."

Rick blinked at her, his eyes big, but then he started to walk slowly, hoping that his knees wouldn't buckle under him. "I'll follow you anywhere if it's like this," he muttered, with a husky tone to his voice.

They made their way slowly away from the beach toward the house, and just as Kate had predicted, her phone lay forgotten on the table. As she had hoped, she had other things on her mind now.

_**

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This is my first time writing anything like this-that is, a lot of smut-so I really hope you liked it. The most smut I've ever done previously was the little dabble that happened in Chapter 20 right before Billy broke in on them, so this was quite something for me to write. If anyone feels the need to go jump someone on a beach right now, then I guess I did OK. ;-)

_**So if you like it, please hit the little 'review' button and tell me. Each comment is like an early Christmas present, and I very much appreciate all of them.**_

_**And if you liked it, rest assured that I'm not done yet. There's more to come. And frankly, even though this story has gotten way longer than I ever thought it would, I don't see an end in sight. Or maybe I'm just thinking sequel. Who knows?**_

_**So again, please review! (pretty please?)**_


	25. Chapter 25

_**Thanks for all of the awesome reviews for the last chapter! You're all great!**_

_**This is a somewhat short little ditty, and I'll try to make future chapters longer. Hope you like it!**_

_**Disclaimer: once again, I don't own anyone.**_

They made their way up the steps toward the back deck of the house. After enjoying Rick's reaction when she started to lead him away by his manhood, she laughed and relented, grabbing his hand instead. They stopped at the foot shower to wash the sand off her feet, and Kate used the opportunity to wrap the towel around her body while he rinsed his feet. She knew it probably wouldn't stay there much longer, but for now she wanted a bit of protection from the night breeze.

"Come onnnn!" Rick whined. "You just ruined my view!"

She patted his face. "Poor Ricky. You'll live. Anyway, you just saw me. A lot of me."

"And I still want to see you. And feel you..." he said as he attempted to pull the towel off.

She swatted his hand away. "Leave my towel alone. The breeze is chilly, and I'm...uh..._naked_, in case you've forgotten."

"I haven't forgotten. I mean, _duh_, that's why I want the towel gone! And I can help keep you warm...you _know_ I can," he said in a low voice as he stepped toward her.

She stepped back from him, out of his reach. "Use your memory. And your imagination. You always say how you have such a good imagination."

"But the real thing so much better. I've been spoiled now."

"You've always been spoiled. You live your life spoiled."

"But yet, you love me anyway," he reminded her, thinking of how strange it felt to be able to say that, and have it be _true_. Amazing.

The word 'love' in relation to her and Rick was still so new to her, but it felt right somehow. Even though the words were said half jokingly, she smiled at Rick, biting her lip. "Yeah, I do." She leaned up to kiss him. "But you're still spoiled."

He wasn't one to let an opportunity pass him by, at least not anymore, so when she tried to step back from him, he followed. Closely. She couldn't escape, and if the truth be told, she didn't want to. He trapped her by placing his arm around her back and leaned to kiss her, hard. "I want you again," he told her as he nuzzled her neck, sucking and nibbling at the tender flesh and giving her goosebumps.

"I can tell," she said breathily. "You've already achieved liftoff," she added, referring to the hardness that was pressing against her lower abdomen.

He pulled back to look at her face, and a cunning, devious smile bloomed on his own face. "Oh, yeah," he growled, while walking her backwards.

When she realized what he intended, she shook her head and tried to stop his movements. "No, Rick! No way. Don't you dare. I was kidding. Rick, do you hear me? I swear, if you..."

"Too late," he interrupted, as he grabbed her tightly and proceeded to jump into the pool with her in his arms.

"Ayyiiiii!" she shouted as the water came into contact with her skin. "Rick Castle, you are so dead..." She was silenced as his mouth covered hers and he whipped her around in the water to press her back against the wall of the pool, pulling the towel off to let it fall down to their feet. His mouth plundered hers, his hands were everywhere on her body and for the second time in as many minutes, she found she didn't want to escape. As his mouth moved to feast on her neck, she managed to ask "So is your little spaceship flying OK, Captain?"

His movements stopped. He raised his head and looked at her through narrowed eyes, trying to look serious even though that look was compromised by his heavy breathing. "I thought we covered this already. My spaceship is not 'little'. It never was little." He thrust his hips at her. "And now, thanks to you, it definitely doesn't have even a _hint_ of 'little'."

She smiled against his lips as she wiggled against him. "Yes, I do actually like the size just fine. So how is the navigation system working?"

"All systems are go. Requesting permission to fly in and..." he asked huskily as he gave her a brief flutter of a kiss, "...dock."

"Oh, please do," she moaned. He needed no further invitation. Their eyes locked on each other as he reached around to cup her bottom and lifted her up as she spread her legs apart. He moved his hips to nudge at her opening a few times, teasing both of them. "Problems?" she asked breathlessly.

"Never. Just adjusting the angle of entry," he clarified, as he reached behind her knees and lifted them a bit more, causing her to open wider for him. "Perfect," he finished, and on a low grunt, he slid slowly into her. When she felt him finally break through to gain entry into her body, she threw her head back and let out a long moan of her own.

"God, I love those sounds you make. I love _you_," he panted as he started moving in and out slowly. "How can this be so good again?"

"Oh, Rick...I don't know, but don't stop." She put her heels on the back of his hips instead of around him, to keep herself open for him as much as she could. The sensations were exquisite. "More..." she moaned again.

Rick couldn't stand her breathy words, and he had no ability to resist her commands. He began moving his hips faster, pushing her into the side of the pool with each thrust of his hips. He didn't want to hurt her by being too rough, but she looked like she was about as far away from pain as she could be. Then, with little warning, she cried out as her orgasm slammed into her. She seemed to shudder for longer than she had the other two times, and her long moans and ecstatic cries in the night were the beginning of his undoing. When he felt her clench around him, he was lost. He managed to get in two more thrusts as he lost the fight and began to empty himself into her, his moans mixing with hers.

After the last aftershocks had subsided, Rick collapsed against the side of the pool. Kate had draped her arms over his shoulders and she was able to stay up when he had her pinned against the wall.

Finally, she spoke. "What are you thinking?"

"Well, nothing deep, that's for sure. You've rendered me incapable of deep thought."

"I could make a snarky and off-color comment-you did walk right into that one, after all-but I won't because of what you just did to me."

"Pass inspection, Detective?"

"Your thrusters were firing quite nicely, Captain."

"And your space station was an immensely pleasurable place to visit." They turned their heads toward each other and met in a tender kiss. When they separated, she realized that she was starting to be able to see his face more clearly. She looked at the sky, and realized that the first light of the sunrise was starting to appear.

"We need to get some sleep. The sun is going to be up in a little while." She urged him back a little so she could separate herself from him and stand up.

"And you say that like it's my fault? _I_ wasn't the one to stage a three a.m. rendezvous at the beach." He followed her to the pool ladder. He admired the view of her naked behind as she climbed out of the water ahead of him. As if she felt his eyes on her, she turned around and rolled her eyes when she saw his leering look.

"Yes, but we could be in a warm bed right now-together-if you hadn't grabbed me and thrown me in the pool."

"Hey, you were the one who brought up 'liftoff' and started our little visit to SpaceCamp. And I did not _throw_ you in the pool; I _jumped_ in the pool with you. But you have to admit, wasn't it just a little bit fun acting out our little space-themed conversation from this morning?" He threw a look at the lightening sky. "Uh, make that yesterday morning."

She turned and aimed a look at him through narrowed brows. "Castle. Thanks to you, I will probably never look at the space program in quite the same way ever again." Her face relaxed into a small smile. "But yes, it did add a certain sense of...adventure, and it was way better than walking away frustrated like las-" she stopped quickly as she realized that she'd revealed too much...she hadn't wanted him to know how turned on _she_ was after their bantering the morning before.

His mouth dropped open a little before a sly smile formed on his face. "Why, Kate! Do you mean to tell me that you might have been just a teensy bit aroused by our cosmic conversation yesterday? That I wasn't the only one whose engines were revving?"

"I think the only thing larger than your spaceship is the gas cloud of super inflated ego that surrounds it."

"You still didn't answer my question." He was back to acting like a little kid trying to get his parents to tell him what they got him for Christmas.

She shook her head him as she grabbed one of the other towels. Wrapping it around herself, she said, "And I'm not going to." And she turned and went inside, leaving Rick staring after her, with a smug smile on his face. '_Yeah,' _he thought _'I get to her.'_

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She went up to her room...oops. She supposed after what had happened to them down on the beach in the pool, it would probably be 'their' room now. She crawled in bed between the expensive cotton sheets. She really was tired; she just didn't realize it until she laid her head on the pillow. She hoped Rick followed her soon; he was a good snuggler and she'd love a good snuggle with him right now. Of course, with the way the last few hours had gone, she was sure that the snuggling would probably lead to something else. Which wouldn't be a bad thing. No, she thought with a smile, it would, as they had already proven, most likely be a damn _good_ thing. And that was the last thing she thought of as her body gave in to take the rest that it needed.

Rick came upstairs to find her already asleep in the big bed in the master bedroom. He walked slowly over to the bed and set down a large glass of ice water on the nightstand. He knew she'd been drinking a lot at the party and he didn't know how much she'd had to drink since then, so he didn't want her to wake up with a whopper of a headache. Plus all of the...uh...physical activity they'd engaged in. Well, it was a moot point now since she was already asleep, but at least the water was there if she needed it.

He could see her slender form underneath the covers, laying on her side as she breathed evenly. He stared at her for a moment, thinking that this was one of the rare times he had ever seen her asleep. Maybe the first time. When they had slept on the couch, he had felt her, of course, but he had never really been able to just gaze at her, because she had been cuddled with him. And looking at her now, he felt a lump in his chest. She was beautiful. And she was truly his now.

Hesitating only briefly, he crawled in the other side of the bed from where she was. He moved over next to her and laid down on the pillow facing her. He couldn't resist gently stroking a finger down her cheek. "I love you," he told her sleeping form, before leaning in to give her a whisper soft kiss on her cheek, so as not to wake her.

He was surprised when, in her sleep, she then reached out with her arm and attempted to wrap it around his torso. When she shifted her head to lay on his shoulder, he eased his arm under her to bring her closer to him, to hold her as they slept. After she moved her leg languidly over to entwine with his, he realized that they were in a pose that he had only imagined in his most tender dreams of her...laying naked in a bed with her, sleeping or close to it and wrapped around each other intimately, just about as close as two people could be. It wasn't even about the sex, which had been mind-blowing; this moment was about them and their newly-admitted feelings, feelings that were obviously already woven deep in their souls by the way they turned to each other unconsciously, even, for her, in a state of sleep. Then Kate shifted again in her sleep and tightened her arm over him a little more, as she mumbled "luvyoo" into his chest. And as he heard the soft sleepy statement, mumbled from her unconscious self, the lump in his chest got a little bigger. And for the second time that night, he felt tears in his eyes. Life was perfect.

_**I know it was shorter, but it just seemed like a good place to end it. Don't worry, there's more good stuff to come. **_

_**Sorry for mistakes...I have to run but wanted to get this posted. I'll correct them later.**_

_**Reviews? Please? I love 'em!**_


	26. Chapter 26

_**Thanks to those of you who read the last chapter, and even more thanks to those of you who reviewed it. I was starting to wonder if people were losing interest because this last chapter/story seemed to be getting a lot fewer hits than it did in the chapters before they had the beach boink, and it got a lot fewer reviews too. I hope that doesn't end up being the death of my story! That would indeed make me very sad.**_

_**By the way, this contains a very mild spoiler for 3X10: Last Call.**_

_**Disclaimer: don't own anyone.**_

* * *

She awoke to bright light filtering into the bedroom. She opened her eyes and was assaulted by a throbbing pain above her eyes, which made her shut them again quickly. She put her hand to her head and moaned. Ugh. What time was it? Why was the room so bright?

Then she remembered the events of the night before, and as they filtered through her mind, she became aware of the arm that was curled tightly around her, the warm body at her back, and the face that must be buried in the back of her neck, judging from the tickle of warm breath that she felt every couple of seconds. She didn't have to turn around to know.

Rick.

She wished she could stay there with him, because under normal circumstances it would be wonderful to stay there with him, but she had to do something about her head. She tried to move his arm, but he just tightened it around her. Now was not the time for him to be lovey-dovey, not when she had two fencers waging a battle inside her head. With giant clubs as well as swords. And taser guns. A little more forcefully, she grabbed his arm and tried to move out of the way.

"Wuzzya doin'?" he said groggily, obviously somewhat awake now.

She tried to tell him in as few words as possible, because even talking usually hurt when she had a bad headache. "Head. Hurts."

He unwrapped his arm from her, but pushed her down when she tried to get up. "I was afraid of that. Brought you some water last night." He gestured to the big glass on the nightstand. "Stay here. I'll get you something." He climbed out of the bed on the other side and disappeared, returning a minute later with two pills. "Here. Extra strength." He handed her the water. "Drink. All of it. I loaded it with ice when I came up here and it's not too warm. It's only been a couple of hours anyway."

She drank several gulps of the water, downing the pills too. "I wasn't even drunk...it had all worn off by the time I went to bed. Why am I hung over?"

"Too much sex on the beach...in more ways than one." She looked at him, as if to say 'not now.' "No," he clarified, "You're probably not really hung over, just dehydrated from all of the sex on the beach drinks, and from nothing after that except for...well, sex on the beach."

She started to give him a look, but then grabbed her forehead. "Ow. God, Castle, don't make me roll my eyes at you. It hurts too much."

"Finish the water." She lifted the glass to her lips, downed the rest of it, and then put the glass back on the nightstand while he climbed back in the bed on the other side.

"OK, now come here. Let's make you feel better."

She looked at him through a haze of pain and her mood changed in an instant. "GOD, Rick will you get your brain out of your crotch for once? I. don't. feel. good. I'm not in the mood to help you get your rocks off, _get it? _So if that's what you want right now, then go find some nubile little bimbo to bang and go for it. Go screw your brains out. Have at it. I'm not your girl. Or go on into the other room and take care of it yourself. Leave me alone." She put a hand back to hold her head as her yelling made her head throb more.

Even through her hazy vision, she saw the look of hurt pass his face as her angry words obviously stung him. He took a deep breath before speaking. "Kate, while I certainly like doing _that_, right now we both need more sleep and you are not feeling well. If we're going to do _that_, I'd prefer a willing and able partner, one who feels decently. And, of course, without question, that partner _has_ to be _you._ Nobody else, ever. And you _are_ my girl, like it or not. So we're just going to lay here now together, closely, hopefully get a little more sleep, let the pills take effect. Let me pamper you a little. Does that work for you?"

Rubbing her head, she was instantly sorry for what she'd said, accused him of, for really no reason. "Mmm-hmm," she mumbled. Regretful of her outburst and touched that he, Mr. Sex Maniac, wasn't even thinking about it now, she was even soothed a little by his calm voice despite the horrible way she just spoke to him. That all he was thinking about was making her feel better. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't cut it for an apology, but I don't get headaches very often and when I do, I get mad. And bitchy. And this one is just pounding."

"It's fine...I know you don't feel well." But even through her own pain, she could hear some of the hurt still in his voice.

"No, it's not fine, what I said, but let's just talk about it when I'm feeling better, OK?" Then as an important afterthought, she added, "I don't want you to go," as she laid down on her pillow.

He rolled on his side and put his arm lightly on her shoulder nearest to him. "Is that OK?" he asked quietly.

"No."

"No?"

"I think I'd feel better if I used you as a pillow again. I seem to sleep pretty well when I'm like that. OK?"

He gave her small smile. "I told you several days ago that you can use me as a pillow anytime you want. The offer is still good." With that, he rolled over on his back again and raised his arm. She moved to lay down side of him, her head resting on the upper part of his chest under his shoulder. He pulled the sheet up over them and leaned forward to give her a kiss on the top of her head. She reached an arm around his chest. With her head on his chest, she could hear the steady beat of his heart. He absently began to draw designs on her skin of her back and arms very lightly, and it was wonderful how soothing that felt. Through the rhythmic sound of his heart and the feel of him touching her skin, she slowly relaxed and drifted off to sleep.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

When Kate awoke, she realized instantly that she was alone, even before she registered that her head no longer had the entire percussion section of a marching band residing inside it. She reached for Rick in her sleep, but found only emptiness, and the disquieting sensation of him being gone was enough to wake her. But she felt of the spot where she knew he had been, where his head had rested on the pillow, and she still felt some residual warmth, so she knew he hadn't been gone long.

As she awoke, she registered sounds in the bathroom. She looked at the clock; it was almost noon. She listened to the sounds, as she heard the muted sounds of the steam shower starting. She sat up in the bed, testing her head to make sure that the percussion section and fencers had indeed vacated her brain. So far so good. As she fully woke up, her words from hours ago came back to her...the angry words that she had spat at Rick when she was in the throes of her head pain. She winced as she remembered telling him to go find a bimbo to bang, yet he just verbally shrugged it off, though she did remember the look on his face when she was spewing that at him. He didn't deserve that. She just wasn't a nice person when she didn't feel well, and that was a hard pill for her to swallow. She knew she could be a total bitch. From the high of their lovemaking on the beach and in the pool, she had dropped to the low of waking up with a near-migraine and then supremely insulted the man she had just declared her love for less than twelve hours ago. She felt lower than low. Not really the way to start a relationship on a good note.

But this wasn't going to fix itself. She wronged someone, someone special to her, and she was going to try to make it right. Standing up, she walked to the bathroom, grateful to find that he hadn't locked the door. The lights were off in the bathroom, but she found that he had turned on the soothing blue lights of the shower. He looked kind of forlorn standing there, facing away from her, letting the water from the shower pelt him from all directions, his head hanging down. He also looked really nice because his bare ass was facing her, and did like the sight of that. But that was for later; right now, she had some apologizing to do.

She walked to the shower and pulled open the door with a soft click. If he noticed, he didn't show it. He was still in the same position, head down, water running over him. She quickly stepped in the shower and shut the door, reveling in how wonderful the steam and warm water felt. She slipped her arms around Rick's chest from behind him, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder blade before turning her cheek to his back and hugging him tightly. When he felt her embrace, he circled her arms with his, and twined their fingers together. They stood like that for a full minute, maybe more, just being.

"Feel better?" he questioned.

"Mmm-hmm. The marching band that was playing in my brain took their amplifiers and went home."

Finally, he disentangled their arms and turned around to very promptly enfold her in another embrace. But after mere moments of that, she pulled away slightly so she could look at him, needing to make things right. "I was awful to you," she said without preamble.

"You felt awful."

"It's no excuse for what I said. I can't believe I-" she stopped talking and put her forehead on his chest as she searched for the words. Forcing herself to look him in the eye, she raised her head again and softly continued with her confession. "Accusing you of just wanting sex was terrible. I know there's more than that between us. Then telling you to go find someone to bang...that was worse. You have to know that after last night-hell, after this last week but especially after last night-it would devastate me if that happened. And that's not easy for me to say, but it would. I love you. I don't know why I said it. But I did and I know it hurt you and I'm so sorry."

He kissed her on the forehead. "Make no mistake, I _do_ want sex. Lots of it." He smiled, lightening the mood just a touch. "But _only_ with you. And I want everything else that goes with it. But only with _you._ And even though it's amazing and I can't wait for more, I'm also not just using you to scratch an itch. If you're hurting, like you were earlier, my concern is for _you_, not for what I can get from you."

He bent down to kiss her, and then he pulled back again. "You know, I was thinking for a while after you dozed off. Sometimes when we're not at our best, or impaired, or sleepy, or whatever, we say what's in our subconsious mind a lot more freely than we ever would otherwise, you know, like when you're drunk or sleepy. You were impaired by pain. So I know for you to have said it, you have to be worried about it on some level-that I'm only in this for a massive boink-fest, or that I'll cheat on you. But Kate? Won't happen. Absolutely will. not. happen. Like I told you earlier, you _are_ my girl. I don't want anyone else. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a cheater. Frankly, the thought of doing that now, with someone else, holds no appeal to me. It's almost revolting." He shuddered, which made Kate give a little smile before she leaned forward and kissed his chest.

"I'll say it again," she said into his chest. "I'm sorry. I really am. And if it matters, you don't have to worry about me looking around either. Something tells me that you'll be all I can handle," she finished, with a teasing hint to her voice.

"If you only knew..."

"But really, Rick...'boink-fest'?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Hey, it worked at the time."

Rick gave a thoughtful look up to the top of the shower and then back down at her. "Incidentally, do you know how long it's been for me?"

She looked at him wryly. "About six hours?"

"Ha ha. Before that, I mean." She shook her head. "A while. A long while. It's really pathetic, actually. It's actually pretty embarrassing, for me anyway, so I don't think I'm going to tell you the specific amount of time. I didn't know why at the time, but I just couldn't work up any enthusiasm for a quick romp in the sheets with someone."

"So that implies that you know why now?"

"I have my suspicions. I think I probably had some deep feelings for you even back then, probably loved you, even though I didn't really know it yet. Or wouldn't let myself think about it, because you were with hunky doctor boy."

She felt that warm feeling in her belly at his words. But she still pointed out, "And you had Gina, don't forget."

"For a while. But you and hunky doctor boy were an item for a lot longer than Gina and I lasted. And Gina was 'safe' because I knew her already, even though she drove me up a wall more often than not."

"Can we NOT talk about Gina, please?"

"Done. But anyway, after she-who-shall-not-be-named, there wasn't anyone else, because I guess in MY subconscious, I just wanted you, so I had no enthusiasm to even try to find anyone else. I guess it would have felt something like cheating, even though you weren't anywhere near to being with me."

"You know, it's kind of hard to believe. Your sexual drought. Well, until last night."

"I know. But it's true." Then he got a smile on his face. "Good one."

"Huh?"

"Sexual drought. Drought is usually the absence of water. And we did it in the ocean...water. Then in the pool...water. Good one."

"Unintentional, but thanks." A sultry smile bloomed on her face. "Rick? We're sort of in water now. And we're naked. Does it..." She rubbed her chest against him, her bare nipples grazing his chest, "...give you any ideas? For anything other than showering?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Ha! In this shower? Loads of ideas. But really, I get ideas whenever I see you lately, with clothes, without clothes-"

His thought was cut off by her little yelp. "Rick! Our clothes...last night! We left them floating...we never picked them up!"

"Hey, I'm the only one that had actual clothes. You, my dear, had those little scraps of fabric that someone decided to call a bikini."

"But that was one of the new ones that I just got when we came here. We just left everything! What if someone else finds our clothes?"

"I think we had our minds on other things besides the clothes."

He stepped away from her. "What are you doing?"

"Going down to get our clothes," he teased.

"NOW?"

"You're concerned about the clothes. You want the clothes."

"On second thought, the clothes can wait. Now shut up and sit." She pointed to the seat in the shower.

"Oooo, bossy. Tell me, why am I supposed to be sitting?"

"So I can have my way with you. Are you having memory problems? Do you not remember me just asking you about the possibilities of things to do in this shower, besides shower?"

"And you say I'm the one with ADD, who changes my mind all the time? But you were worried about the clothes," he said with a twinkle in his eyes. "So I thought we'd just go look for-"

"Shut up and sit, Rick."

Before sitting, he reached around to the controls and turned off the hot water-didn't want it running cold on them if this ended up being a while, which he hoped it would-but turned on the steam. Then he sat down and held out his arms.

She straddled his lap and put her arms around his shoulders as he leaned forward and took one of her nipples in his mouth. His hands massaged both breasts as his mouth worked its magic on one of the nipples as she urged him on by playing with the hair at the back of his head, drawing his mouth closer to her. Man, he had a talented mouth! She scooted forward on his lap until they were touching intimately but not joined yet. When she felt him, she wiggled a little bit and then began to move her hips in a seductive rhythm against him. He reached up and grabbed her head, and claimed her mouth in a searing kiss, lips and tongues battling for control. She continued to move sinuously against him, caught in a frenzy of passion as his hands and lips continued to roam her body. She returned the favor, driving him crazy with every light little kiss or touch. The battle, the movements, the caresses and the kisses went on until they were hot and sweaty and slippery not just from the steam in the shower, but from the steam they were generating together.

Finally, their mouths broke apart and Kate gasped hoarsely, "Now. I need you now." She raised her hips a little as she reached down to grasp him with her hand to guide him inside her. As he slid inside, they both let out breathy moans. They moved together in perfect rhythm, each of them demanding more from the other, but also giving just as much, until their cries and moans of release echoed off the glass walls of the shower.

They sat for several minutes, regaining their equilibrium and letting their breath return to normal. Finally, Kate trusted her voice enough to speak. "Rick?" she asked softly.

"Hmmm?"

"Why didn't we do this sooner?"

He knew it was a rhetorical question; they both knew that she was never ready until now to look at him in a romantic light, let alone sleep with him (even though there was very little sleeping involved with what they'd been doing). But he chuckled anyway and told her "Forget the whys...we should probably just start making up for lost time. You game?"

"Game on. But not just yet You wore me out. How about we turn the shower back on and you can wash my back?"

"Only if you wash mine."

"Deal."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

An hour later, they sat at the counter eating scrambled eggs and toast, even though it was two in the afternoon. "So," he said between mouthfuls, waving his fork around, "what are you going to do about Lanie?"

"What do you mean, what am I going to do about Lanie?"

"Come on, Beckett, you know she's been saying for about, oh, forever that you and I should hook up. And you have to know about the office pools about us. And, uh, we've kind of hooked up. So are you going to call her?"

"I don't know...I hadn't really thought that far. It's kind of nice being here without anyone to gossip about us or give us funny looks. But she did send me a weird text yesterday about me holding out on her or something like that."

"If you do call her, make sure you tell her how ruggedly handsome I am, how you can't keep your hands off of me, and how I'm a twenty on a lover scale of one to ten."

She rolled her eyes. "What's in your eggs, anyway, Castle? Did you sprinkle them with some happy fairy dust that's making you imagine purple pixies and other weird things? A twenty...really..." she trailed off.

"You didn't have any complaints earlier," he said dryly.

"I don't typically rate my lovers, and I'm not going to start now."

"But if you did rate me, how would I do?" he asked eagerly. Then in a low voice, he added "I know how I'd rate you."

She put down her fork and leveled a glare at him. "Castle, are you trying to give me a reason to start pinching your ear? Do you feel the need to cause me to make you use your safe word?"

"Why can't you admit you like me?" he said in a pouty voice.

"_Like_ you? Rick, are you delusional? Or worse, are you suffering from amnesia? We passed that about...what? Almost twelve hours ago? When I said those three little words? You know, the ones that started with 'I' and ended with 'you' and had 'love' in the middle?"

"Kate, I get _that_. But sometimes it's nice to know that the love of my life isn't constantly annoyed by me. Don't get me wrong, it really is fun to annoy you sometimes. But I really don't want to build a relationship on annoying you. Doesn't seem very...strong. And it seems kind of weird."

_'The love of his life?'_ she thought. Wow. But she went on. "Rick, if you didn't pull my pigtails, and I didn't get annoyed, we wouldn't be us. That's what we do. And obviously, it works for us. Doesn't it?" she prompted, and he finally he nodded. "I mean, look: I could have totally normal, and sometimes that's OK. I _have_ had totally normal. But it gets boring after a while. You're not boring, that's for sure."

"Thank you! I would absolutely hate to be boring."

She gave him a look that said _'duh' _and then continued. "Like when I was dating..." she hesitated all of a sudden, not wanting to mention an old lover with a new one, "...some other guy, and you called me really late, got me out of bed and sure, I was kind of annoyed. But I still came anyway, and then I end up chasing through abandoned tunnels under New York, finding a crime scene and a murder weapon and a really expensive stash of booze. Now, that was pretty cool. But you know, I just went blindly chasing after you, and left Jo...him there at my apartment. It always seemed to work like that...me leaving him to run off with you or to meet you for a case. Boring and normal gets left in the dust when I'm with you and sometimes I even end up having fun. And I will probably never admit that again, so don't even try. But yeah, you annoy me. And maybe it's weird. But, like I said, it works for us-and I can't _believe_ I'm saying this-but maybe some annoyance is not a bad thing." She held up a finger and then pointed it at him menacingly. "As long as it never again involves Justin Bieber or alligators."

"So you're saying that you like it when I annoy you?"

"I plead the fifth on that. But do I let you know when you've gone too far?"

"Yes. Not that I listen though."

"You do have a problem with that sometimes."

"Just sometimes?"

"Castle, I'm trying to be nice. Take it or leave it."

"I'll take it," he said, leaning over to give her a kiss.

After they separated, he took a bite of his now-cold eggs and then grimaced before gulping them down. "So, getting back to our original topic of conversation, what about Lanie?"

"She's my best friend and I came down here a week ago and I haven't even talked to her yet. I really should call her."

"But you know she's going to ask. Cajole. Demand. Extricate. In an extremely menacing and evil manner."

"She does have that talent," Kate nodded. But she saw the gleam in his eye. "Rick...what's up your sleeve?"

He looked thoughtful. "If you wouldnt mind a little bit of my kind of humor, I think we can give the good doctor something to chew on that would really make her wonder what in the world is going on with us down here. I mean, she _thinks_ she knows, but what if we alter her perception a bit?"

She took a deep breath and got a gleam in her eye of her own. "We have a week left, and while I love Lanie, I do _not_ want a third degree either now or when we get back. So start talking...what's this plan?"

_**

* * *

**_

I hated to end it there, but I've been having some pretty big writer's block lately. It's actually not a block, it's more like a 4 foot thick cement wall type of barricade. Hopefully it will relieve itself soon.

_**Please forgive me for this chapter being kind of short too. **_

_**Please review...I definitely appreciate them all! (but please be kind...I'll really try to get them better. Really.) Please? Thank you sooooooo much!**_


	27. Chapter 27

_**OK, I think now I have some of my writing mojo back. I hope. Thanks so much for the great reviews and encouragement you gave me after the last chapter. **_

_**When I was creating this document, it struck me that this is chapter 27. 27! Wow! 7 weeks ago when I started this, I never dreamed it would get this long. Thanks for sticking with me! I probably wouldn't have made it this far or this long without all of your wonderful reviews and messages. Even though I can't reply to nearly enough of them, I still love reading them and I still get such a charge out of getting an alert that there's a new review or message.**_

_**As kind of a Christmas present for you (or whatever-type-of-holiday-you-celebrate present), and also a 'thanks for waiting so long between updates' present, this is the longest chapter I've ever written. It's about 25% longer than the next longest chapter (which was chapter 18, FYI). I knew where I wanted to end it and in order to get there, it just ended up growing and growing. Hope nobody minds a long chapter. ;-)**_

_**And the usual: if you recognize them, I don't own them. **_

_**Without further ado...**_

* * *

"I don't know, Rick. It's pretty shaky," Kate told him, when she heard about his plan to throw Lanie off their trail.

"Yeah, it _could_ be, but it could work too. Depends on how convincing you can be."

"With a normal person, I can be very convincing. I had you going about Hans, right?" she asked, waggling her own eyebrows at him for a change.

"You just had to go and remind me about that again, didn't you? 'Hans knows just how hard to push'," he parroted in a higher, breathy voice.

"Yes, I did," she told him, standing up and moving in between his legs as he still sat on the stool, her face close to his. "But the difference now is that I know exactly how hard _you_ can push," she finished softly, as her mouth met his on the last word. He wasted no time in putting his hands on her hips and gently pulling her a bit closer, as she looped her arms around his neck. The kiss was soft and exploratory, at first. Then as it started getting a little more heated, with Rick running his hands under Kate's shirt and caressing her back, she pulled her mouth away from his. "And I'm also finding out about some of your other hidden talents."

"I'll enjoy showing you all of my talents, Detective."

"And I'll enjoy learning them. But, unfortunately," she gave him a quick peck on the lips as she sat back on her own stool, "we have to continue with planning our little game of Lanie subterfuge. So as I was saying, I can be very convincing. But Lanie knows me, and she's sharp. It'll be hard to pull one over on her."

"It's a matter of feeding her just the right information. And the information has to be very minimal, sketchy information. Feed her a little bit, and let her draw her own conclusions. It's all in the delivery, and then we let her stew for a while."

"You really think we can pull this off?"

"Trust me. I'm a writer. Let me write the story. Let me set the stage. Come on, this could be fun."

"And you'll really be OK with this? I mean, and maybe taking pictures of it too?"

He took a deep breath. "I hope so. But you might have to give me some extra TLC later..."

"If you can handle that, I can handle giving you some TLC." She leaned over to give him a little peck on the lips before leaning back on her stool.

"So...?"

She pursed her lips together and looked at him. Finally, she threw her hands in the air before slapping them on her legs. "Okay. Where do we start?"

"First, you mentioned a text. We should start with that. What did the text say?"

She started to turn to get her phone, before she realized that she didn't have it. Her mouth opened in a little O before she uttered "Oh, shit!" and then flew out the door onto the back deck.

"What the...?" he muttered as he watched the blur that was Beckett run out the door before hopping up and hurrying after her. "Beckett?" he called as he exited the house. He continued on to the edge of the deck to see her run toward the table on the beach. "Yo, Kate? Where's the fire?" he called to her.

She waited until he was walking toward her on the sand, and held up her phone as she explained, "When we started talking about the text message from Lanie, I thought about my phone. And then I remembered it was still out here on the table!"

"Why was it down here?"

"Rick, have you forgotten what got you down here last night when I rocked your world?"

He looked off in the distance and his eyes sort of glazed over, as if he was remembering the night before. "You texted me," he told her, after realization dawned.

"Good thing for you that you listened for once."

"Like it wasn't good for you? I seem to remember it being good for you," he stated, with a cocky grin, "Twice. Within less than...what? Like fifteen minutes."

She rolled her eyes but then grinned back at him. "Yes, Castle, you rocked my world too. Twice. Down here anyway." Then _she_ thought back to the night before, and also to their shower discussion-while they were still discussing things, anyway-and remembered something else that was left down there. "Our clothes!"

She quickly looked around the beach to see if anyone was out. It was embarrassing enough to have left their clothing floating around for as long as they had, but she really didn't want to have anyone witness them picking it up. She knew it was a public beach, which was why she'd picked the middle of the night for their little tryst, and the beach was, as planned, deserted then. She saw that there were several people, looked like a family with little kids, at least a hundred yards away, and there were some other people in the other direction, but at least they were walking the other way.

"Come on," she instructed, heading toward the water. "Keep your eyes open."

She found her bikini top pretty quickly, the red showing up really well against the color of the sand. She smiled to herself as she remembered how Rick peeled it off of her. Of course, Rick saw her bend down and pick it up, and he saw the smile, which of course elicited another cocky grin from him as his mind was remembering the exact same thing she was. He walked over to her and whispered to her, his breath tickling her ear, "Glad you found that. I wouldn't mind a repeat performance sometime."

"Often times the sequel isn't as good as the original."

"My sequels always live up to their hype. And with my muse to inspire me..." he trailed off, letting her draw her own conclusions even though the implication was clear.

She tried to suppress a shiver at what he meant as she heard the sound of his deep voice in her ear and the feeling of his warm breath as he spoke, but she wasn't successful. "Rick, stop that right now or we're probably going to be adding more clothes to the other ones already down here, and then we'd probably get arrested for indecent exposure in the process since it's daylight."

He laughed and gave her another cocky grin. "Wouldn't the gossip rags have fun with that? 'Playboy Author Arrested for Naked Beach Sex Romp with Muse'." Kate's face lost a few shades of color when he said that. "Don't worry about it. I'll do my best to keep your dignity in tact. So let's find some clothes."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

In the end, they found everything except for Rick's boxers, which he proclaimed was a small sacrifice for the experience. They took the retrieved clothes to the house and threw them in the washer. Then Kate took her phone out of her pocket to look at the last text from Lanie.

_'Ur holding out on me...need the 411'._

"What does she mean? What kind of girly talk have you been dishing? Did you tell her about our little beach fling?"

"NO!" Kate exclaimed. "Jeez, Castle. I do consider some things private. At least for now," she smirked at him, as his mouth dropped open a bit. "Anyway, this was from a couple of days ago...right around the time of the alligator incident."

"Do you think the boys showed her the alligator video? I mean, _I_ wouldn't have-you were pretty scary when you threatened them-but you never know."

"Maybe they just made something up?"

He thought for a minute. "OK, let's just go with our regular plan of being vague. Text her back and say something about the weather or whatever."

She took her phone, hit reply, and began typing some letters into her phone. When she was done, she showed it to Rick and asked, "How's this?"

_'Weather is beautiful, beach is awesome. Wish you were here.'_

He nodded. "Good. Sufficiently vague."

"Send it?"

"Sure. Then we'll see what she gives us back." He waited while she sent the text and then sat down on the couch, pulling her down next to him. "So what should we do to pass the time?" he asked suggestively, leaning over to kiss her neck.

"Rick, we can't spend all of our time in bed."

"Uh, Kate? We're just cuddling. Having a little fun. And by the way, are you neglecting to realize that we haven't even made it to a bed for _that_ yet?"

He was doing delicious things to her neck, and now his hands were caressing her sides through her shirt. Highly distracting. "Uh, yeah, guess you're right," she muttered as her hands found their way under his shirt. Now that she knew what he could do to her, with her, it didn't take much for the fire to ignite within her in anticipation. She pulled him over her and he accepted the invitation by pressing her into the soft cushions on the back of the couch, where they had slept for those other two nights. Now, she wound her arms around his neck as he lay down over her, kissing her until she was breathless.

But all of a sudden, he jerked away and climbed off of her, saying "Just a minute...". He walked over to the doors that led onto the deck, and determinedly flipped the lock on the door, pulling the curtains right after than. Turning back to her, by way of an explanation he said "No. Not this time." He remembered the last time they were getting intimate on the couch and Billy had interrupted them.

He hurried back toward the couch and took a flying leap at her, causing her to yell, "Castle!" followed by a big 'oof' and a laugh as he landed on her. But the laughter died away as he leaned over her and took her mouth with his, and his hands were once again everywhere. But the difference was that this time they weren't just caressing her skin, they were working very diligently to divest her of her clothes. She had no objection, and within no time his shirt and her tank top and bra were thrown carelessly to the side, and he was once again kneading her breasts with special attention paid to her nipples by his mouth. As his mouth was occupied, his hands reached down to yank off her shorts and panties. He cupped the sensitive area between her legs, then couldn't resist slipping a finger into her wet heat. But even as her legs opened wider for him and she let out a moan, she pulled his hand away and said "No...together. Your shorts...off, now."

Neither of them was in any state to notice the chime of Kate's phone, indicating a new text message. And even if they had noticed, neither of them would have cared in the least to read it right then.

With Kate helping him, Rick pulled his shorts and boxers down enough to free himself, not wasting time to pull them entirely off. She was still half-sitting, half laying on the couch, and she pulled him toward her. They came together, joining their bodies in a rush, as if they were running out of time. Their moans and breathing mingled together, and Kate closed her eyes and leaned back as Rick drove himself into her again and again. He was getting close, from the incredible feeling of her and from seeing her naked, sprawled back on the couch, joined with him. She'd said she wanted them to fly together. "Kate," he gasped "can't handle much more...too good."

"Help me..." she pleaded, and he knew what she needed. He put his hand between them and touched her intimately with his thumb, and he felt her body respond instantly as she gasped. But he was relentless with his thumb as he stroked her, and her body started to quake and writhe with her release and she screamed out his name in between a chorus of moans. It was too much for him to hold out any longer, and he echoed her screams with his hoarse calls of her name as his orgasm claimed him.

He collapsed next to her, burying his face in her neck, both of their chests still heaving as they struggled for air. After their breathing calmed a bit, they tried to find some words.

"Where did-"

"-that come from?" he finished.

She nodded and moaned in supreme satisfaction.

"We were just sitting here and then...wham."

"What do you mean...wham?" she asked. "I mean, yeah, it was wham, but you started it when you started nibbling on my neck."

"But I was just content to do that. You're the one that pulled me down and then...got all hot and bothered."

"I did not get..." she started to protest, but then she realized that she had initiated a lot of it. "Okay, fine. But it's still all your fault. You start doing that to me and I have a really hard time _not_ ripping off your clothes."

"Doing _what_, specifically?

"Oh, never mind!" she said, not really wanting to explain it, because really, she, herself, didn't yet totally understand this intense reaction to him.

"No, I really want to know," he told her. Then he smiled and continued, "Because if it gets you this...this..."

"Horny?"

His eyes got big at her choice of descriptive words. "Well, I was going to say 'in the mood' or 'aroused', but I guess 'horny' definitely works. It's kind of...bad girl-esque, you know? I like it," he said, nodding at her and drawing out the words. "Anyway, if there's something that I can do to...get you...like this, then MAN, I want to know what it is so I can do it more!"

She rolled her eyes, but still asked him "Didn't you tell me once that we'd be good together?"

"And you told me 'you have no idea.' I almost swallowed my tongue when you said that, by the way. And now I know you were right. Holy macaroni, were you right," he agreed with himself, giving her a little kiss on the cheek. "I really did have no idea. None. If I did, I don't know that I would have survived all of these years, at least with my dignity intact." He shook his head incredulously.

She chuckled. "So you're never going to doubt me again, are you?"

"Not about that. Never again about that."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After finding their clothes, they went for a walk on the beach, the text messages forgotten for the meantime. They held hands, stole little kisses, and occasionally tried to splash each other with the water from the surf. To anyone who might have been looking at them, they looked like a couple in love, just having a good time by being with each other.

They returned to the house in the late afternoon, and Kate immediately saw her phone laying on the table. She grabbed it to check to see if Lanie had texted her back, and found that she had.

"Hey, got a text from Lanie."

"I can't believe it took her this long!"

Kate looked at the timestamp on the message. "It didn't. It's from earlier...oh. She probably sent it right around when we were breaking in the couch."

"Better not tell her _that!_" Rick said. "So what does it say?"

Kate unlocked her phone and, unconsciously holding her breath, opened the message.

_'U know what I mean! Not beach or weather either! Spill!_

She held out the phone to Rick, who read it with a look of puzzlement on his face. "Rick, what does she think she knows? Do you have hidden cameras around here? Is there a beach webcam that caught us in action last night?"

"There _is_ a beach webcam," he said, and then grinned as her eyes got big and her hand flew over her mouth. "But not here. That pub that we went to for lunch on your birthday? They have one out on the beach."

She glared at him. "Nice way to give me heart failure, Castle. The thought of a sex tape of me floating around..."

"Well, on the bright side, that little beach sexcapade you set up would have you set for life. It was _hot_! And I say that from very personal experience. You would definitely make a killing."

She swatted his arm. "Castle, will you focus? Stop thinking about hot sex tapes. What's the next message for Lanie?"

"Just start doing what we talked about. Tell her something alluding to male companionship. Or just something really vague. Some little tidbit to point her in the direction we want her to go, at least at first," he started, holding out one hand to the side of him, "which will actually be right," he continued, holding out his other hand to his other side, "before we tell her it's wrong, and we get her going waaaayyy in the wrong direction, but you know and I know that it's not really wrong," he went on, his voice and gestures getting bigger and more animated. "But we just want her to think it's wrong because that will really bug her! So she'll be thinking one thing, which is the right thing, and then BLAM! We hit her with the other story that's really wrong but we tell her it's right. And-"

Kate cut him off. "Rick, stop gesticulating before you hurt yourself. We went over this already, remember?"

"But it's just going to be so fun!"

"I know." She put her hands on both sides of his face, and spoke slowly, like a sweet nanny would to a small child. "But, Ricky, honey, you need to focus now. No getting excited." Then her voice changed just a bit when she added seductively, "At least not until tonight."

He was instantly sober after her ending comment, looking at her with unblinking eyes. "OK. Um. Yeah. Geez, Kate! OK, give me your phone." He typed something in and then gave it to her to scan.

She read the simple message. _'Good food too. Had a great birthday dinner.'_ Her eyes flashed back up to Rick as a small smile formed on her face. "Vague. That will drive her nuts."

"Isn't that the idea?"

She hit send and then set her phone down on the counter as she went to the kitchen. "Water?" she asked?

"Sure. Thanks."

She had no more brought the bottles back than she heard her phone chime, indicating a new text message. She took a drink of her water and then grabbed her phone from the counter, unlocking it to read the message.

_'From what I saw, things were pretty chummy. About time! Need the deets! Call me! Sick of waiting hours or DAYS for info.'_

Rick was reading the message over her shoulder. If anyone had been watching them, it would have been comical how he leaned slightly back and to the side, and they turned to face each other at the same time and both said "_From what she saw_?" and then, "What did she see?", followed by "The video!" Rick grabbed his phone out of his pocket and scrolled to the second video that he'd made and pushed play.

And there, in full color and sound on his phone, they finally witnessed what had sent their four closest friends into gossip and betting heaven days earlier-the sight of Kate sitting very comfortably on Rick's lap as she delivered her video ultimatum to Ryan and Esposito.

"Shut the bleeping front door," Kate breathed.

"Yikes," Rick agreed.

"They probably didn't even hear what I said. They were probably just watching me be so cozy with you."

"Yikes," Rick said again.

"I never even thought about it. Can you imagine the field day they're having with this? They obviously showed it to Lanie; I wonder who else they showed it to?"

"Guess we displayed a little more...familiarity...between us than we ever had before. And at that time, we hadn't even...uh...you know...yet."

"Boinked?"

"Hey, that's my word!"

"Well, as your boinking partner of record, I'm demanding full rights of use. Deal with it. Now what do we do about _that_?" she gestured at the phone.

In response, he grabbed her phone and started typing a reply. She tried to remind him that Lanie had told Kate to call her, but he just waved her away as he was typing. When he was done, he handed her the phone so she could read it.

_'Not sure how you saw anything. Spies, L? OK, you guessed...got a new man. Great guy. Can't talk now. Going to dinner. Later-K'_

"Does that sound enough like you wrote it?" he asked.

"You didn't say anything about the video."

"That's because we're going to ignore it until she specifically says something about it. Besides, it fits with the plan...the story that we're trying to sell her, at least initially. The more we try to address it, or play it down, the more she's going to latch on and make a big deal out of it."

"So we ignore and play it cool." He nodded. "Just one thing..." She added '-sushi' after the word dinner and then handed it back to Rick for him to proof.

"Sushi?" he asked, the question in his voice.

She shrugged. "She thinks sushi is sexy. Just adding to the atmosphere."

He nodded like he understood, and then his brow furrowed in puzzlement as he thought about it more. "Huh?" he asked.

"Don't ask. It's a Lanie thing. But it'll work, trust me."

It was his turn to shrug, and then he looked at her and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. She nodded in confirmation, and he pressed send.

He gave her back the phone and she said "Grab the keys. I think we need some sustenance."

"Where to?"

She smiled at him, almost like she was embarrassed to admit it. "Your favorite place. I think you're rubbing off on me. We could probably both use some Willy-Jerry barf."

He cringed at her words, but he knew what she was talking about. "First 'boink' and then 'barf'? Your vocabulary is expanding, although I'm not sure that's a good thing in this case. And what about dinner? I can't believe you want to go have ice cream and we haven't had dinner yet!"

"See the effect you have on me?"

"Among other things," he said as he waggled his eyebrows at her. "Let's go."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As it was the other time they had been there, the make-your-own sundae place was packed. When Rick tried to get in line, Kate put her hands on his shoulders and steered him out toward the seating area. He tried to protest, but she said "No, this time _you_ are finding the seat, and _I_ get to make the ice cream mess." He looked like a little kid whose favorite toy had just been broken by the neighborhood bully. She gave him a little kiss. "Don't worry, it'll still be good."

"You're probably going to use like only two toppings or something," he pouted.

"Go. Sit. Let me surprise you." Leaning into his ear, she whispered, "Did you like it last night when I surprised you?"

His eyes found hers, and he just nodded dumbly.

"Then go!" she said, pushing him away. Turning back to the line as he ambled away, she muttered to herself, "He just has to be in on everything."

The woman ahead of her turned around. About Kate's height, she had dark blond hair and a quick smile, but still with an air that said 'don't mess with me'. "You have one of those too?" At Kate's puzzled look, she added, "Don't get between a man-child and his kid food."

Kate laughed. "Oh, yeah. My first lunch down here, he fed me mac and cheese and oreos."

It was the woman's turn to laugh. "Mine likes the McDonalds happy meals. For the toys. He says they spark his creativity by appealing to his inner child. Thank God there's no McDonald's here or we'd be eating there all the time and instead of shells, we'd be taking home a suitcase full of toys promoting the latest Disney cartoon."

The woman held out her hand. "I'm Joelle. My husband, the McDonald's loving man-child, is Dave."

Kate took her hand, silently pleased to find that Joelle's grip wasn't one of those wimpy barely-there handshakes that so many women had. The woman had some strength. "Kate. The pouter that you saw me relegate to sit is Rick."

"Nice to meet you."

"Same. So where are you from?"

"New York, near White Plains. But I work in the city. Trauma nurse. What about you?"

"The city. I suppose we're neighbors, somewhat. I'm a cop."

"Guess this is place is culture shock for you as much as me, huh? You know, laid back, no timetable..."

"Yeah, although Rick does seem to have a way to make even the most mundane sounding thing have some excitement once he gets his hands in it."

"Sounds like there's a story there."

"If you only knew," Kate said cryptically, not really wanting to say anything about Rick's celebrity status quite yet, especially if Joelle didn't recognize him.

They'd been shuffling along while they talked, and finally found themselves ready to take the bowls or platters to start making their concoctions. The meandered through the line, amazed at the sheer volume and variety of the toppings. This was Joelle's first visit, but it might as well have been Kate's too since Rick did the sundae construction the last time. When Joelle spotted the jalapeno peppers, she gave a long "Ewww...with ice cream?" comment. Kate was so caught up in her sundae construction that when she surveyed her platter at the end, she was surprised to find that her platter looked much like Rick's had the first time they'd been there.

She saw Joelle eyeing both of their platters, before she said "I guess it's easy to get carried away." Kate just nodded.

After they paid for their platters, they went to look for their men. Kate spotted Rick first, sitting forlornly at a table for four. On an impulse, she motioned to Joelle. "Rick got a big table. Why don't you guys join us?"

She shrugged and smiled. "Sure you don't mind?"

"It's fine. Rick is a pretty social guy anyway."

Joelle spotted Dave a few tables away, immersed in something involving a pen and a fairly large pad of paper. She nudged him a couple of times to get his attention, and then directed him to the other table where Rick and Kate were sitting down. As they walked up, they heard Rick say to Kate, "So Ben and Jerry and Willy Wonka were going at it again, huh?" as he looked down at her versions of the sundaes.

Kate tried to defend herself. "I've come to the conclusion that there is no way of getting out of there with anything less than an ice cream and topping mess that would probably be enough to send twenty diabetic people into comas." She looked up and saw the other couple. "Rick, Joelle and Dave. I invited them to join us. We can compare ice cream catastrophes."

Dave had short, dark brown hair and a quick smile. A quick, gorgeous smile, Kate thought. She loved Rick, sure, but she could still appreciate a nice looking guy. They exchanged pleasantries and small talk while they ate their sundaes. Rick was doing a lot of the talking, just commenting on things in general or asking superficial questions of the other couple, trying to direct the conversation away from Kate and him, or their professions. But he did it very adeptly, being the charmer that he was. Dave seemed like a fun-loving guy, pretty laid back, and they had to smile when he gave his wife a hard time but she gave it right back to him. Kate and Rick had been keeping pretty much to themselves, for the most part, and it was nice being anonymous out in public. Rick wanted to try to keep it that way if he could. Normally he liked getting recognized, having people fawn over him, ask for his autographs. But this was his time with Kate, and he didn't want overzealous fans infringing on it, or worse yet, alerting the press to their whereabouts.

Eventually, though, the topic did come up, and Rick was asked what he did. "I do a little bit of writing here and there, dabble in some things." He said it nonchalantly, but he didn't miss the gleam in Dave's eye.

Dave gave him a little smile and said "Ah, that explains it."

"Explains what?" Rick asked, afraid of Dave's reaction.

"Why you looked kind of familiar. Didn't put two and two together at first." Dave looked at his wife, who was smirking at him, and gave her a knowing look. "Okay, when did you figure it out?"

Joelle said to Kate, "So competitive, that one. We bet each other on the silliest things. Of course, I usually win. But it keeps life interesting, you know?" Without waiting for an answer, she glared at her husband and answered his question. "Before you, that's all you need to know."

Kate felt a little bit lost. "OK, I have to admit that I feel like I'm missing something."

Joelle lowered her voice. "It's just our way of saying that we know who you guys are. And since it's obvious that you'd like to keep things on the down low, just know that you don't have to worry about us freaking out on you."

Kate and Rick looked at each other, not really knowing what to say. This couple knew who they were, and were actually _lowering_ their voices? They weren't screaming and fawning and trying to get autographs or have their pictures taken? Dave continued, also in a low voice, "Listen, I have a semi-normal job, but I got some notoriety once, a couple of years ago. The fame was fun at first-for about two minutes. Then it got old. And then the crap started. Couldn't do anything normal without someone watching us, commenting on everything. I mean, really? How were we that interesting that people couldn't leave us alone for long enough so we could just go out and grab a pizza in peace? So yeah, we know something of what that's like. Certainly not on your scale, but our little taste gave a us a big _dis_taste for all of the gossip rags and the camera stalking. So no, don't worry about us. I mean, if you _want_ us to jump up and start screaming your name, we can certainly do that, but not unless you ask."

"Uh...no. Just sitting here is fine." Rick glanced at Kate again, who still looked a little awed over someone recognizing Rick and not going berzerk. But then she gave him a little smile and shrugged. "Forgive me," she asked, glancing from Joelle to Dave, "but...are you two for real?"

"As real as this mess of lactic acid and sugar melting on these platters," Joelle replied. She leaned forward and looked Kate right in the eyes. "Seriously, your secret is safe with us." Direct worked well with Kate, something that Joelle had obviously figured out.

Dave leaned forward and told them, "But we may want to take this party somewhere else; it seems there are a couple of young little things at my 10:00 that keep glancing over here and smiling, and I suspect it's not because of my handsome mug."

With that, the four of them got up and walked out to the parking lot. Dave asked, "You two up for a drink somewhere? Somewhere dark, that is. At least the young little things wouldn't be able to follow us into a dark bar."

Kate looked at Rick, who nodded in a 'sure, why not' type of way. "Sounds fine, although we'll probably have to make it a somewhat early night. We were up kind of late last night."

They found a little bar that wasn't too crowded or well-lit. They found a booth in a somewhat secluded corner. As they sat down and talked over some fruity beach drinks, Kate and Rick found the other couple to be...fun. It was fun to watch them go back and forth with each other, much as Rick and Kate did themselves. Somehow Kate found herself telling Joelle and Rick about trespassing on the resort and getting cornered by the alligator, which elicited a comment of "Oh, my God, you must have been ready to kill him" from Joelle and "Cool" from Dave, followed by a knuckle rap with Rick. When the women saw that, they both rolled their eyes simultaneously, which had the men looking at each other in surprise.

"Freaky," Rick breathed.

"Weird," Dave echoed. "You ladies sure you didn't practice that somewhere?"

Kate smiled wryly. "With him," she said, hooking her thumb toward Rick, "I get a lot of practice."

Joelle gave her a knowing look. "After living with him," she nudged Dave, "for the last few years, I'm surprised my eyes aren't just permanently spinning around like slot machine wheels."

"Now technically," Dave interjected, "that wouldn't be right because slot machine wheels roll from the top toward the bottom. Your eyes roll the other way."

Joelle fixed a glare on Dave before turning to Kate. "See what I mean?" She put her head in her hands and said "Oh, brother" while the others laughed. She looked up again and said "So how long have you two been together?"

Kate answered "not long" at the same time that Rick answered "a few years", which had Kate and Rick spinning toward each other in surprise, and then had Joelle and Dave looking at each other, and then at Kate and Rick in amusement.

"Sooo...?" Joelle prompted. "Which is it? Or was one of you in a coma for a while, which resulted in an altered sense of the passage of time?"

Kate muttered, "A coma of realization, I guess."

Rick tried to explain, in the exaggerated way that only Rick could do. "You know the story...I've been hanging around her for a while; coming up on three years. She was hot, and I knew we'd be good together from the start. And I thought 'who could resist this?' You know?" he said, pointing his hands to his face. Kate thumped him in the side with her elbow. "Okay, well, she did. Resist me, that is. Really well. I don't know how she did it. But I kept on persevering, and then I asked her to come down-"

"Asked?" Kate exclaimed, turning toward him. "Rick, sweetie, let's tell these nice people the truth about how I came to be here, okay?" Shoving a hand over his mouth, she said "He kidnapped me."

"What?" Joelle shrieked, and then slunk back in the booth, surprised at her volume.

Dave looked at Rick. "And you're still alive?"

They told a brief synopsis of the story, leaving out the heavy stuff, but told them about how everyone was conspiring to help Rick get her down there, and ultimately to get them together. "They've been making comments about us for_ever_," Rick said, continuing his dramatics. "So now when we go back we're going to be treated to probably even more comments now that we actually are together, followed by the 'I told you sos' and the 'what took you so longs.'

He continued. "So actually, we're going to play a little trick on Kate's best friend, who we also work with. She's about as blunt as blunt can be, and there will be no end to the grief once she finds out that we're together."

"I mean, I love her, but since I've had to listen to her for a couple of years, and I know I'm probably going to have to listen to her for another couple of years at least, we decided to play with her a little bit," Kate explained, getting the evil little glint in her eye.

"Oooo, do tell," Joelle prompted.

"It was actually Rick's idea," she began, giving him credit. "He's used to plotting and planning so things like this come very easily to him."

"Like kidnapping," Dave deadpanned.

"Exactly," Rick agreed. He looked at Kate. "See, _he_ understands."

She looked sideways at him and narrowed her brows, but didn't say anything. Turning back to Joelle, she said "_Anyway,_ the idea is to let her think for a while that we-Rick and I-got together. Be kind of vague about it. Feed her some good information, stuff we're doing, how wonderful everything is...whatever. But I never use Rick's name; she just assumes that it's Rick, because why wouldn't she assume that? Then somehow I let it slip that I didn't really get together with Rick, but with some wonderful guy that I found down here."

Joelle smiled and nodded. "OK. Could be interesting. But this friend of yours-"

"Lanie."

"So this Lanie sounds pretty sharp...are you sure she's going to fall for this...she won't know you're yanking her chain?"

Rick continued, his voice low and melodic, just like he did when he was reciting one of his theories at the station. "It's all about feeding her little snippets of information and to get her mind working in one and only one direction. When we have her feeling pretty smug with herself because she thinks we're finally together, then blam! We hit her with the other guy. She'll be so shocked that she won't stop to think about the fact that we could be messing with her. Then when she does stop to think about it, we hit her with a little more proof of the guy, like a picture or something. She's been after us to get together for so long that this will bug her. Really bug her."

Joelle thought about it. "Could work. If he plots it out like he does in his books," she said, pointing her finger at Rick, "it could work. But you know what? I think you should use Dave for your mystery man. He's kind of weird sometimes, well most of the time, but he's cute. And he has great teeth. Unless you had a man already in mind?"

Rick sat back and eyed him up.

Dave interjected "I'd do it. Well, I won't do too much-I _am_ a happily married man," he said, obviously for his wife's benefit, to get some brownie points. "But I like being sneaky and this sounds like fun. I could certainly pose for a picture. I could even talk to her and lay on some charm."

Kate had already thought he was good looking, so he would fill that requirement. She looked at Rick. "It would save us from having to find some other random guy somewhere, like you were thinking."

"It would." He had a gleam in his eye now. "It could work."

Joelle looked at Rick. "But what about you? What if this Lanie asks about you? How are you going to explain away just watching her hook up with some other guy when she's on vacation with you?"

Rick looked somewhat taken aback. "That is actually a good question. Huh. Well, I've been watching her go out with other guys most of the time that we've known each other, so I guess this is just more of the same."

Dave raised an eyebrow. "Open relationship?"

Kate laughed. "Hardly. More like major denial. Seems there were some feelings brewing, but we kind of squashed them down. So yeah, we dated other people. But I think we're finally past that now. Well, except for me 'dating' Dave." Her fingers made air quotes when she said the word 'dating'.

Joelle said "Well, if it does come up, you can always use the other half of us-me-as someone to occupy Rick. That is, if you do want to use Dave."

The four of them talked about the Lanie plan for a while longer, just throwing around ideas about what Kate could say to her. Rick told them about the video, which they agreed put a slight crimp in their plans, but nothing that was a deal-breaker. Dave pointed out what Rick had said earlier, that it was probably better that way, because it served to steer her more in the direction that Rick and Kate were together, which was what they wanted her to believe, at least at first. Finally someone looked at the time and they were shocked to find out it was after 11 p.m. After exchanging phone numbers, they parted company, with Joelle and Dave extracting promises from them to call whenever they wanted to make use of Kate's new 'boyfriend'.

Kate and Rick walked back to their car. "Are you okay to drive?" Kate asked. If not, she could always walk around for a while yet, even though she was getting tired. The foursome had ended up talking for a lot longer than she'd expected, but she didn't regret it...it had been fun.

"I'm fine. My last couple of drinks were water."

They made it back to the house without incident. Remembering the morning, Kate went straight to the kitchen, got a big glass of ice water and drank it down. Then she refilled the glass and took it up to her room.

She was surprised to find that Rick wasn't in the bedroom, and he wasn't in the bathroom. After setting her glass down on the nightstand, she went to one of the drawers and found a red satin nightgown with thin spaghetti straps. She went into the bathroom and quickly brushed her teeth and changed, and when she came out she was surprised to find out that Rick still hadn't joined her. She left the bedroom and called his name, and was further suprised to hear his answer from the spare bedroom that he had been sleeping in, at least until last night.

Kate walked into the bedroom to find him laying on the bed, still fully dressed, propped up against his headboard, checking his phone. When he saw her in the red satin nightie, his jaw fell open a bit and he absently set his phone aside. She was secretly pleased at his reaction, but just asked him "What are you doing in here?"

"Checking my messages," he responded, still looking at her and appreciating the way the satin draped over her curves.

"No, that's obvious. I mean why are you doing that _in here_?"

Strangely enough, he looked like he was at a loss for words. "I, uh, didn't want to assume anything. I thought you might want to be alone, or, uh, have some time to yourself. I didn't want to crowd you."

She was touched at his thoughtfulness...he wanted to give her space if she needed it, not assume that they would just start sharing a room even despite all that had happened the night before. But she was going to put a stop to that line of thought right now. "That's sweet, Rick. Really. But I love you...have I said that lately? So I'd like to share a bed with you, and sleep with you, and cuddle with you and whatever else might happen to take place. So get your butt in there and let's go to bed." And she turned and walked back to the master bedroom.

He wasted no time in following her. "Kate? I just have to say two things. First, that little red number is really hot. Second, I love you too." And he walked over to stand by her, and kissed her tenderly.

After their kiss, she crawled into bed and, after he stripped down to his boxers, he crawled in the other side. They turned to face each other.

"I think the lack of sleep is catching up with me. I'm not sure that I'm going to be up for the same level of activity as last night. Or today," she told him.

"Honestly, I'm still a little bit in awe that I'm even here, in the same bed as you. While some things are certainly fun, I am perfectly content to just lay here next to you and sleep. There's not another place in the world I'd rather be."

"I love you." She gave him a light kiss and snuggled in closer, laying her head right next to his and putting her arm around him. They both entwined their legs together, and he used his free hand to lightly caress the skin of her arm and her shoulder in a relaxing motion, just content to be touching her. "I love you, too," he whispered, as they both succumbed to sleep, their limbs tangled around each other.

* * *

_**That's it for now...hope you enjoyed it!**_

_**When Rick flipped the lock on the door to the deck before the couch sex, that was a little shout-out to one of my favorite shows (from the 80s) 'Scarecrow and Mrs. King'. In the last episode of season 3, when they were starting to get together, they kept getting interrupted when they would be about to have a little romantic moment and the Scarecrow did that same thing one time, and uttered those same words. I loved that show!**_

_**Secondly, to put it bluntly, Dave is my dentist. Or more specifically, if I think of Dave, I get a picture of my dentist in my mind. He's really a very good looking guy...tall, dark and handsome (much better than Demming was). Hence the comment about the teeth. He almost makes me want to have a cavity. Almost.**_

_**(And how about those two spoiler clips for 3X11? Love them!)**_

_**I hope you all liked this chapter. I'd love it (seriously LOVE it) if you'd leave a review and let me know what you think. Thanks (in advance) so much!**_


	28. Chapter 28

_**Many thanks to everyone, yet again, for continuing to follow my little story. I appreciate all of the reviews and the nice comments...I really, really do! I still get such a charge when I see the 'review alert' emails in my inbox after I post an update.**_

_**I'm having a little uncertainty with this chapter; I've been feeling like I'm just writing a bunch of smut ever since Chapter 24. I hope it's not too much, but if it is, let me know and I'll try to tone it down.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone, but they're fun to write about.**_

* * *

Kate was having a wonderful dream. She could almost feel her lover's warm breath on her skin, and the touch of soft lips as he spread soft, leisurely kisses on her neck, across her shoulder and down her arm, his tongue dancing across her skin randomly as his lips did their work. The sensations of his fingertips as they slowly traced her side, hip and thigh caused a glimmer of heat to start forming in her belly. She let out a soft moan in her sleep at the delicious feeling that he was evoking in her, hoping the dream didn't end anytime soon. It felt so real, so deliciously real! His hand traced back up her leg on the inside of her thigh, and the light touch on that sensitive area, approaching a more sensitive area, caused her to shift her weight and spread her legs apart just a bit, even as his lips returned up her arm and started kissing a path across her chest. As the errant hand ran softly over the juncture where her thighs met, tickling that tender area through her panties, she felt him grab the spaghetti strap of her nightie with his teeth and pull it down over her shoulder, peeling the fabric down very low. Somewhere around this time, she had come awake enough for it to permeate into her consciousness that this was no dream; her lover-Rick-was slowly seducing her with stolen touches and tender kisses, as she slept. She had no desire to move. She could stay like this forever, just letting him have his way with her body.

If she did, she knew she wouldn't regret it.

It was kind of a new experience for her-surrendering control-but she was willing to give it a chance. So she kept her eyes closed and her muscles relaxed and let his talented lips, tongue and fingers work their magic on her body. When his teeth finished pulling the strap down, and then pulled the nightie down further to expose one breast, she felt the fire burn just a little hotter. But when his hot mouth found her nipple, she couldn't hold back another small moan, nor could she stop her other hand from raising up and grasping the back of his head, drawing him just a little closer and holding him there to make sure his mouth didn't stop what it was doing anytime soon.

He trailed kisses back up her body, over her neck, until he got to her face. He lightly kissed her lips, and then caressed the side of her cheek, prompting her to open her eyes. In the dark shadows of the moonlight streaming through the window, she saw the sexy smile that had formed on his face. "I thought you were asleep," he told her softly.

"I was. And I was having this really great dream. I didn't want it to end." She let out a little yawn. "But then I realized it was real and there actually was this guy in my bed, trying to seduce me."

"And you didn't try to fight him off?"

"Uh-uh. Felt too nice. So I thought I'd just lay here and let him have his way with me."

"Oh, really?" Rick's eyes glinted with the implications of what she was saying.

She let her arm that was on the back of his head fall back to the sheet. "I have no strength to resist. I'm totally at his mercy," she confirmed huskily.

Rick didn't need a second invitation. He moved to lay totally over her body, supporting some of his weight on her forearms, as his mouth covered hers again in a leisurely but teasing kiss. Despite the fact that they had made love several times already, she had never felt his body lay fully on top of hers before. It was...consuming, and she loved the feeling of being totally surrounded by him. She responded to his kisses by letting her lips and tongue give teasing responses of her own, although she still kept to her story about being totally at his mercy and didn't give any other physical responses.

All at once, Rick pushed himself off of her and sat up, crouching over her knees. "While I love you in this red little number," he told her, referring to her satin nightie, "I think that I like you even better out of it." He pulled her into a sitting position and lifted the nightie over her head and threw it behind him, as she plopped back onto the bed. And, not wasting the opportunity, he also pulled off her panties and pushed his boxers down before stretching back out and covering her body with his, now skin to skin as they lay together.

They continued the dance of lips and tongues, leisurely but still passionnate, but without the frenzy of their coupling from the afternoon. They took the time to just revel in being with each other so intimately, without the need to speed things along toward their inevitable conclusion. In short, they were both very much enjoying the journey. Kate marveled at how his hands could seem to be everywhere all at the same time, inciting in her a firestorm of sensual awareness of him. And that was only what his hands could do. When his mouth and tongue came into the mix, her senses burned with that awareness. She closed her eyes and just let herself _feel_. She was so caught up in all of the sensations that somehow she didn't even realize when he parted her legs and slowly slid his long shaft inside her, until he was totally buried within her. And then, when she finally realized that they were fully joined, when she recognized the feeling of being stretched as he filled her, it seemed that all of the nerve endings in her body came alive at the feeling. She tried to grab him around his back to hold him more tightly to her, but he murmured 'uh-uh; you're at my mercy, remember?', and he took her hands and laced his fingers with hers, stretching them above her head while his mouth and tongue made designs on the tender flesh of her inner upper arm before moving down to her breasts again. As he continued to ever-so-slowly move himself in and out of her welcoming warmth, he kept his lips working; at her lips, at the tender flesh of her neck, or down across her collarbone to her breasts. When his mouth wasn't on hers, her head was thrown back on the soft pillow, writhing from side to side as small moans escaped her throat.

She could feel the pressure building in both of them, but still, they didn't increase the pace into anything more frenzied. They were still enjoying the journey. But despite the desire to take it slow, their bodies could take no more. Kate, with her arms still up side of her head and her hands still joined with Rick's, began to see bright fissures of light behind her closed eyes as her body succumbed to Rick's talented ministrations. She moaned as she felt her release take her, as she arched her body toward Rick's. But her release was slow this time; it didn't slam into her, but carried her up and set her down on a cloud of ecstacy, and left her there. It seemed to go on and on, her universe centered on where their two bodies were joined, as their hips moved together in unison. She never wanted it to end, and for a while, it seemed it never would. When he could take no more of the feeling, of the sight of her letting go, he gave in himself, all the while still feeling the shocks reverberate through her body. He closed his eyes and echoed her moan when the time came for him, overcome by the intensity of the whole experience.

His head fell down so his face was resting in her neck, where he could smell her unique scent and feel her soft hair. He pressed a kiss to her neck there, which caused a little shiver in her body. Slowly, he let go of their joined hands and ran them down her arms and her sides, to cup her bottom with one hand and her back with the other. He quickly-as much as he could manage to do anything quickly at this point-rolled them over so she was sprawled on top of him, relieving her of his weight. After their positions were reversed, she raised her head to look at him, and said "Lift your head up for a sec." When he complied, she pulled one of the pillows under his head, pulling part of it forward on his shoulder, where she laid her own head as she buried her face into the side of his neck and wrapped one of her arms around his head to snuggle herself closer to him.

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. When Rick finally did speak, his voice was husky, and held a note of astonishment. "I thought it would be normal. Mundane."

She raised up to glare at him. "Castle, please tell me you're not insulting me. Not after _that_."

His eyes flashed open, shocked at how she was taking his words. "No! Never! I just mean...we're finally in a bed."

"No duh."

"That's normal, for what we just did. But we've done it everywhere _except_ a bed so far. So while I knew it would be great-we would be great-I thought it would be a normal type of great. I had no idea," he said with some amount of wonder, echoing her words from years ago. "Just when I think it can't get any better, it does. In a boring old bed. You're amazing."

Satisfied-in more ways than one-she laid her head back down in the spot by his neck. "I have no complaints myself," she agreed. "There's definitely something to be said for letting you have your way with me."

Rick chuckled. "At your service, my love. Any time," he whispered, turning to kiss her nose. "Absolutely any time at all."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick awoke in a good mood with a smile on his face, feeling almost giddy, with the impression of having had a really good dream, although he couldn't remember it. But as he came awake and became conscious of the weight laying sprawled across his chest-the warm, breathing, _naked_ weight of Kate on his chest-he knew where his impression came from, and it wasn't from a dream. It was from the woman sprawled on top of him.

He closed his eyes again, and feeling the gentle purr of her breathing while she slept, wondered for the umpteenth time in the last 24 hours, how he had gotten so lucky.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate came awake slowly, but quite conscious of her surroundings. She was sprawled on Rick's bare chest and felt his arm circling her one side, with his hand buried in her hair. The room wasn't dark like before, but was now bathed in the light of the sun coming throught the windows. She raised her head to see if he was awake, to find his blue eyes staring at her above the cocky grin she knew so well.

"Good morning," she whispered.

"Good morning to you." He used the hand that was still tangled in her hair to pull her forward into a kiss. As they broke away from each other, he saw her smile disappear into the cloud of a frown on her face. "Hey," he asked as the expression on his own face showed concern. "What's wrong?"

"This is a nice way to wake up," she said softly. She bit her lip.

"So why the look? If this is how you look when something is nice then I'd hate to see what you look like when something is awful."

"You have seen it already. Yesterday. When we woke up. I was so rotten to you. It was our first morning waking up together-well, like _that_-and I ruined it. I just...we can't get that back. I'm _so _sorry. And it still sounds _so_ lame."

"Kate, we covered this. You weren't yourself. You felt like crap. I'm okay. _We_ are okay."

"But I don't feel like it's okay. You've been wonderful to me...have been for a while. It took me long enough to realize that I had feelings for you, and then as soon as I do, I yell at you, and did more than that. I was such a bitch. Through it all, I remember the look on your face, despite what you said. And I put that look there. I...I'm not proud of that, Rick."

"Kate." He tightened an arm around her and rubbed her back. "We've survived through a lot of weird stuff and some pretty intense stuff over the last few years. And you know, it's going to happen again; things won't be absolutely perfect all the time. And look where we are. We still made it here, after everything. That's what's important. " He pulled her forward to kiss her again, and then he changed tactics. "If you don't like how you handle something with a case, what do you do?"

"Fix it. Duh. But I can't fix this, Rick; it's done."

He massaged the back of her head with the hand that was in her hair. "And I'm telling you that you don't have to worry about it. But you think you do. So figure out something to do make you feel less guilty. Make me dinner or something."

"Dinner? Dinner is nothing. It's even potentially harmful if I'm making it. I'm no gourmet cook, remember?"

"Fine. Make dinner and serve it to me naked then." He grinned and waggled his eyebrows at her, which made her smile.

She pressed a kiss onto his chest, still smiling. "Thanks."

"Any time."

"So what time is it anyway? Should we think about getting up now, getting some breakfast?"

He smiled his cocky smile at her. "I don't know about that. I think I'm already up." As he smiled and his grin changed to a lecherous one, she became aware of the hardness pressing against her upper thigh.

She answered his grin with a sexy little smile of her own. "Well if you're already up, then I guess we'd better get busy, right?" She shifted forward so her face was right above his and sealed her lips to his with a kiss. And the kitchen didn't see any sign of them for the next few hours.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The 'Lanie Plan' was in place. She and Rick had role played, and she knew roughly what to say and how to say it. It was time. So she hit the speed-dial for Lanie and took a deep breath as she heard the rings. Finally, she heard her friend's voice as Lanie dispensed with any semblance of a customary greeting and got right to the point. "My God, girl, you're actually still alive?"

"Hi, Lanie."

"You've been there a week-a WEEK? And you're only just now calling me? How many times have I texted you? And all I get back are these little farts of information that hardly tell me anything. I want all the poo, not just farts. Now. Spill."

"Geez, Lanie, bad visuals on this end."

"Too bad. I had to autopsy a 400 lb guy that had an eating disorder. And nobody found him for two days. And my supposed best friend basically forgets that I exist after being jetted off to some tropical paradise with a cute rich guy. So forgive me if I'm not in the mood to shove some sunshine up your fine ass."

"I'm sorry for not calling you. I've been...busy."

"I'll just bet! So have you jumped his bones yet?"

"What?"

"Have you stopped having eye sex and gone on to the real thing yet?"

"Lanie!"

"You're with a hunky millionnaire. Alone. And..."

"And there are a lot of other people around."

"What? Are you having a group orgy or something?"

"Lanie!"

"I need some in-for-ma-tion, girl. Now! Spill! And stop giving me one word exclamations as answers."

"Castle has been perfectly nice, so you don't have to worry about him. Tell the boys that he's been perfectly nice too. He said they threatened him, but really, he's been good. For Castle, anyway. Kind of annoying sometimes, but basically pretty good. Oh, I forgot...he's been perfectly nice aside from when he pushed me into the pool. And when he dropped me."

"Dropped you? As in, he was _carrying_ you? Why was he carrying you? Like, to bed? Oh, this could be good..."

"It was nothing. I cut my foot and he just helped me out because I couldn't walk on it while it was bloody."

"And..." she prompted.

"And what?"

"_?_ Earth to Kate! Will you finish your story please, before I have to autopsy myself because I died of old age?"

"Yeah, he decided to carry me, but then he ran into the couch, dropped me, and flipped over onto the floor. It was pretty funny, but not that exciting."

"And did you kiss his boo boos?"

"Of course not!"

"Kate, I'm getting kind of miffed here. I know something is going on down there, especially after that last text when you start talking about your 'new man', as if I don't know what THAT means! All I have to say is FINALLY! So as your friend, I want to know what's going on. You owe me that much for packing your suitcase for you and going along with this plan."

She sighed, purely for effect, trying to sound defeated. "I'm sorry, Lanie. Yes, you're right. It's just that this relationship thing is still so new, that I don't want to jinx it by talking about him too much. But he's really great, and I'm happy. So can we just leave it at that for a bit?"

"Kate..."

"Listen, he's taking me to dinner tonight, and then who knows?" she added suggestively, the implication clear. "But if anything good happens, I'll let you know tomorrow. Promise."

"Listen..."she trailed off. "Oh, damn, my mom's calling me. I have to take this. But I want to hear about this dinner and...whatever. Tomorrow morning. Got it?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Talk to you then. I mean it, Kate!" And then she was gone.

Kate made sure her phone was disconnected and then looked over at Rick, who was leaning against the railing of the deck, watching her with an amused look on his face. "So how did I do?" she inquired of him.

"Not bad at all. You threw out the little tidbit about me carrying you, and then dodged it quite nicely. But what did she ask you about that? You looked kind of shocked at her response."

"She asked me if I kissed your boo boos."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "I wish you had," he muttered, but then shook his head to bring himself back to the conversation at hand. "Good save though. And truthful, because nothing really did happen then. But I'll be happy to let you kiss my boo boos any time. "

"The whole thing really worked well. _She_ was the one who brought up the text from yesterday where I said something about my 'new boyfriend.' And you were right, she _of course_ thought it had to be you. No question."

"Won't she be in for a little surprise? Well, two surprises, if we play it right. By the way, that little improvisation about dinner tonight and 'who knows'?" He put his thumb and forefinger together. "Brilliant. You nailed it. You're going to keep her guessing all night with that one."

She bent in a small dramatic bow, and said "Thank you."

"But why wait until the morning to let her know something? Let's set the alarm tonight to wake us up, and you can text her in the middle of the night, and then not call her until late tomorrow morning, when she's at work."

"You _are_ devious, Mr. Castle."

"Why, thank you, Detective Beckett. That's a high compliment coming from you."

Walking over to him, she trailed a finger down the front of his shirt seductively. "But you _are_ a little presumptuous."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"You said that _we_ should set _the alarm clock_-that is, in the singular-to wake _us_ up, therefore implying that _we_ will be sharing a bed again tonight. Pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?"

"Of course. I don't recall hearing any complaints last night. Or this morning. And last night you practically _ordered_ me to share your bed. I always obey my orders."

"Since when?"

"_Those_ kind of orders? Always. You've just never tried _those_ kind of orders before."

"Well now that I know what it takes..." she trailed off. "But okay. I suppose I can find some room for you in that big old bed tonight."

"I promise I'll make it worth your while," his voice murmured suggestively.

"I'll just bet you will." And their lips met to seal the deal.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

An hour later, they sat on the beach in front of the lighthouse at the eastern tip of Sanibel Island, watching the waves crash against the shore. They could see sailboats and speedboats darting around in the waves, sharing the sea with a few jetskiers and many pelicans that liked to take turns floating in the sea or flying right above it. The birds around the shore were fun to watch, putting on a show for the beachcombers by flapping their wings and dancing around each other as if they were performing some elaborate pantomime. Kate spotted a particularly sedate couple of birds that were good at remaining unaffected by the other birds' antics. Rick remarked that they reminded him of Esposito and Ryan, because they seemed to be slowly taking in their surroundings and checking everything else out, although occasionnally pecking at each other, while the other birds were squawking and being wild.

"See that one on the left?" Rick pointed with the arm that was casually draped around Kate's shoulders. "He has a glare kind of like Esposito. You know when I came back after the summer and you arrested me? He looked at me like that then. He's scary when he does that. See how Esposito-bird kind of dips his head and looks at that one over there? Freaky."

Kate narrowed her eyes, looking from the birds back to Rick in an exaggerated motion. "Rick, are you high?"

"Just high on love, my dear," he said eloquently.

Kate just rolled her eyes.

"Come on. _Look_ at them. Ryan-bird is even shorter than Esposito-bird. Ryan just can't catch a break, even with a bird alter-ego."

She put her hand on his forehead. "If you're not high, then is the heat getting to you, dear?"

"Kate. Look at them. Go with it."

She squinted her eyes and tried to see what he was seeing. She tilted her head to the side, but finally gave up. "Sorry. I just don't see it. It must be a guy thing."

Then she heard his sharp intake of breath. "Hey..." he started. She looked over at Rick, who was grinning. "This is perfect." He hopped up and took his phone out of his pocket, circling around to get a better angle, and snapped a couple of pictures of the two birds with his phone before coming back to plop down by Kate. "Got it."

"You getting into ornithology now or something?"

He started tapping and sliding his finger over his phone. "Noooo..." he replied after a few seconds, obviously preoccupied. After several more taps, he showed her the screen. He had a picture of the two birds, addressed to Esposito and Ryan. The message below it read:

_"Your bird counterparts. Espo on left, Ryan on right. Feed the birds!"_

Kate had to laugh. "Leave it to you, with all of your 'feed the birds' comments, to actually find a couple of birds."

He hit send, leaned over to give her a kiss, and then hopped up, offering her a hand. "Should we take a walk?" he asked.

"Sure." She took his hand and as they started walking, she issued a challenge. "Bet you I can find a bigger shell than you can."

Rick looked at her sideways with a little smile. "Just bigger? Can it be broken?"

"Of course it can't be broken! And no scallops...that's too easy."

"Darn. With or without animals?"

"What do you think? Without...duh! I want to be able to take it home. It's going to be my trophy."

"I thought _I_ was going to be your trophy."

"There's no way you could sit still on my shelf that long. Or keep quiet. So I'll have to settle for a shell. Let's go."

The shoreline at Lighthouse Point dropped off extremely gradually, so they could walk out pretty far into the water without even getting their knees wet. In the interest of fairness, Rick demanded that Kate not go farther out into the water than him, even though she had her swimsuit on, because he had his phone and keys in his pockets and they couldn't get wet. She just rolled her eyes at him and said, "Are you six? Whining that it's not fair...I think you would have driven poor Martha nuts if you'd had a sibling. But fine. I'm _still_ going to beat you though."

And beat him she did, with a nice, perfect whelk shell a little over four inches long. Rick thought he had one that beat her and was practically doing a happy dance, until she looked closer and found a tiny little animal so far inside that it almost couldn't be seen. Surprisingly, he took it well, remarking that it was better to have her win than to not find the animal inside and have a mollusk corpse stink up the house later.

After walking around the lighthouse, they headed back to the house. Despite what Rick said that morning about forgetting about it, she'd been wracking her brain trying to figure out some way of doing something nice for _him_, to try to make up for the awful things she'd said the previous morning. While walking on the beach looking for her trophy shell, the perfect idea popped into her mind. Rick would love it; in fact, she couldn't wait to see the look on his face. It was going to knock his socks off. But she needed a few supplies, so Kate instructed him to stop at the small grocery store. He got suspicious when she told him to wait in the car, but she used his line on him and told him to 'go with it.' She got her supplies, and a few extra things that she could show him, like some gourmet coffee, because she was quite certain he would be unbearable if she didn't show him something. Of course, she asked for an opaque bag and kept it securely on her lap; she knew without a doubt that Rick would try to peek. If there was ever something that he didn't know or wasn't privy to, he would whine and pout and cajole and beg until someone told him, and if any of those still didn't work, she knew he could get devious. She found out that fact about him firsthand right after she first met him, when he stole her files from under her nose while charming her to her face. Now, in the midst of his cajoling, she was tempted to just tell him to forget it, that if she kept it up, there was no way he would ever know, but if the truth be told, she, herself, was also looking forward to putting her idea into action.

With her little idea for Rick, and sending Lanie a suggestive text in the middle of the night, it was shaping up to be a very interesting night.

_**

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**_

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and that it wasn't too boring. The dynamic has changed now that they're 'together', so some of the same type of innuendo doesn't work as well now as it did in previous chapters, and I certainly can't do the near-misses because that ship has sailed, several times. ;-)

_**Please hit the 'review' button and leave me a little note. I still get such a charge when I see the 'review alert' emails in my inbox after I post an update. They really keep me going. I already have the end of the vacation planned, and it's going to be **__**good**__** (I hope). But we have several more days to get through first.**_

_**And I just have to say yay! The next episode to be aired will be a new one...finally!**_


	29. Chapter 29

_**Here's chater 29! I'd hoped to have it up before the stroke of midnight, but I was actually spending a sedate NYE in and was watching Castle episodes, so it didn't really work out. But it was fun! **_

_**So now I have a New Year's present for everyone...my second longest chapter! I didn't intend for it to be, but it it just worked out like that. And to the wonderful reviewer who wanted some more Castle/Alexis time, here it is. And for those of you who like a little (hopefully dignified) smut, this chapter should be good for that too.**_

_**I actually liked this chapter pretty well once I was done with it. I hope you like it too!**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone. Bummer.**_

* * *

"I can't believe you were going to try to pass off mac and cheese as some fancy gourmet delicacy," Kate told him, putting a note of exasperation in her voice. They were sitting on a lounge chair down on the beach watching the sunset, Kate sitting in the space between Rick's legs, leaning back against his hard chest. She took another sip of the wine that she had picked up during her quick foray into the market that afternoon.

"Why do you have to know so many languages anyway?" he said grumpily, because his plan was foiled.

She smiled, as she thought back to her casual inquiry about dinner after they arrived back at the house.

_He bowed in a dramatic flourish and did the 'french chef' voice that he had used on the morning of her birthday, promising her 'zee feast of zee __pâtes et fromage'. Kate had always been good with languages and was fluent or could hold her own in several different ones, so it was no problem for her to translate what he said automatically, faster than he could blink. It was then that she put her hand on her hip and glared at him, before erupting in a fit of rapid-fire real french that he had no hope of understanding. His jaw dropped open and he moved a little bit backwards, away from the verbal french assault. She slowly walked toward him during her french tirade, and didn't stop until he was backed against the fridge and she was right in front of him, still glaring. Staring at her, he couldn't help but utter the one thought that was racing through his brain, mac and cheese temporarily forgotten._

_"God, that is so incredibly sexy." _

_And he pressed his mouth to hers as he did the same with their bodies._

_And when they came up for air several minutes later, even though he still had no idea of what she'd said in her french monologue, he knew that 'pâtes et fromage' was officially off the table as a dinner option._

"Haven't you learned yet not to underestimate me? Even a 12 year old can figure out that 'pâtes et fromage' is just a more eloquent-sounding way of saying it. Well, more eloquent-sounding for native English speakers anyway. And the literal translation of what you said was 'pasta and cheese' anyway. But hey, look on the bright side...most 12 year olds wouldn't have gotten the little diversion that you got before either."

"True. It was a nice little diversion. Do you have any more diversions in store for me?" he asked, bending his head down to nibble on her neck.

"Maybe. You'll just have to be patient." She closed her eyes, enjoying the moment and letting him keep doing what he was doing. But after a minute she made herself continue talking, because she knew what she had planned for him later, and she wanted them both to have energy for that.

"So what time should we send Lanie the text tonight?"

Instead of a response, Rick stopped nuzzling her neck and put his arms around her, laying his head on her shoulder. "Well?" she prompted him. "Why are you so quiet? You're generally not a a loss for something to say. Especially about this."

"I really didn't want to get into this, but I guess, in a way, we have to bring it up because of this whole Lanie project. I didn't really think about it until you said what you said to her earlier, on the phone call, but you implied that after dinner, you and your 'new man' were going to...you know."

"Get lucky tonight?"

"I just...I don't know how to put this. And I'm not really a person who should even be asking this of you. I'm the _last_ person that should be asking this. And I'm not even talking about _me_, but more for this story that we're crafting for Lanie, but..." he trailed off.

"Rick," she said, her tone warning him to get on with it.

"Okay. I don't care what the answer is, just know that. But have you ever been the type of person to have a 'Girls Gone Wild' type of vacation fling with someone? Because if you aren't, then there's no way that the good doctor will eat what we're trying to feed her."

She turned around to look at him, an exasperated type of half-smile on her face. "Rick, please tell me that you didn't order those 'Girls Gone Wild' DVDs?" He didn't say anything, but she could tell the answer by the look on his face. "Oh. My. God. You _did_ order those!"

He had the decency to look a little bit embarrassed. "Hey, it was years ago. It was for research...that's all."

"And a morbid fascination with fake co-ed breasts shaking in front of a camera lens?"

"No, not fake. Fake breasts move differently," he said right away, obviously without thinking. Catching Kate's astonished look, he tried to backtrack. "I mean...I won't...uh...it was...uh...no."

She reached back to grab his ear. "I can see that we're going to have to do a little housecleaning when we get back, huh?"

"Apples! Apples! They're gone! Consider them gone."

She patted his cheek. "Good. Remember, I don't want to share. Not even with a DVD."

Rubbing his ear, he told her, "Believe me, after these last two days with you, I'm thinking that those DVDs would be tediously boring to watch now."

"Good answer."

"Anyway, getting back to my original question..."

Leaning back against him in their original position, Kate thought about it for a few moments before she responded. "I _have_ had my wild moments. Mostly when I was younger though. I'm no prude...I'm sure you figured that out a couple of nights ago."

Rick got a big smile on his face, almost like he'd just taken a big breath of laughing gas, and uttered a vehement "Uh huh!" Kate swatted his leg playfully.

"But, that said, I suppose you do have a point. She'd believe a naked sexfest if it was with you-hell, she WANTS that to happen-and that's good because that's what we want her to think initially, but she probably won't buy it once we bring Dave into the picture and switch gears on her. Because no, I don't typically hop into bed with a guy after a day or two. You found that out pretty fast on that first case, huh?"

"It did take a while for us both to be each others conquests. That's why I'm thinking we'd have a hard time pulling this off if we go too fast...if once we introduce Dave, she thinks back to everything that you've told her and goes 'no way'."

"So back to _my_ original question...what time do we send Lanie the text, and more importantly, what do we say?"

"What do you think? You do know her better."

"Hmmm..." She took another sip of her wine before she leaned forward and tucked her knees up under her chin. Rick leaned forward with her, keeping her close. They watched the small egrets on the beach that never seemed to tire of picking at the tiny little shells that washed up with each wave.

"Okay, how about sending her the text a little after midnight? That's not too early and not too late. And I could say something about dinner being wonderful and then about us going for a romantic walk on the beach, how I think I'm falling for him because I've never felt this way before, and then...that's it, I guess. Be vague and leave her guessing, right?" But Rick didn't answer right away, and when he did, it wasn't the type of answer she expected.

"Have you?" he asked softly.

"Have I what?"

"Felt this way before?"

She turned her head around to find his face close to hers, his eyes deadly serious, like they had been during their talk after she had finally found him after running out on him at the party. During the most serious talk of her life.

"No. Never," she responded tenderly, honestly.

The corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile as the serious look in his eyes morphed into a happy one. "Me either." He gave her a kiss and then settled back in the lounge chair, pulling her with him, so they could watch the lingering rays of the sun as bright orange ball looked like it was sinking into the sea. His simple words conjured that funny feeling in her stomach, that one she'd felt so much of in the last few days, but one that she hoped to be feeling forever.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After the sun had fully set, they walked back into the house, holding hands. Rick told her that he should really should call Alexis; he hadn't spoken to her in a few days. Kate just smiled and told him to say 'Hi' to his daughter from her. She'd always liked the girl, from the time when she first met Rick at the launch party for his book and Alexis had sitting there at the bar, textbooks spread out in front of her, studying.

"Kate?" he asked as he paused, phone in hand.

"Huh?"

"Do you mind if I say anything about...us? You know, now that there really is an 'us', more than just a partners type of 'us'."

"Can she keep a secret?"

"That child? Without a doubt. I don't know where she gets it from."

"Then fine. Just try not to get too detailed in anything, OK?"

"She's my _daughter_!"

"Face it, Rick, you know she's more mature than you are sometimes, and you do often get carried away..." she trailed off, but the look on her face brooked no arguments from him.

"No details. Got it."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As he sat on a chair on the upstairs balcony and watched a palm tree sway in the breeze, an excited voice answered the phone on the other end. "Dad!"

"Hi, pumpkin," he greeted her, all the love he had for his daughter evident in his tone. "How are things? School OK?"

"I got an A on my physics test!"

"That's wonderful! I know you don't really like physics."

"Just made me study harder. I didn't want to let it get the better of me. I had to prove I was stronger," she laughed.

They talked for a few more minutes about school, and about Martha's latest antics. Finally, he figured he'd better stop avoiding the issue. "Uh, pumpkin?"

"Yeah?"

"Uhhh..." he didn't really know how to begin. This wasn't a common thing for him-to tell his daughter about an important-a _very_ important-new woman in his life, and he wasn't sure how to proceed. But with his daughter, he needn't have worried.

"Dad? Are you trying to tell me that something has _finally_ happened between you and Detective Beckett?"

Rick held the phone away from his ear and looked at it like it was a moon rock. Putting the phone back to his ear, he asked her "How do you _do _that? That's too freaky."

"So it's true?"

He hesitated. "Yes?" he said, timidly for him, worried about her reaction.

The high-pitched squeal on the other end of the phone was a good sign that she approved, along with her fast comments of "That's great, Dad! It's about time! I mean, this is really cool!"

"You're okay with this then?"

"_Yes_, I'm okay with it. But how...uh...serious are you guys? I mean, you've known each other for_ever_ so it's not like I'd expect you to go slow or anything. Should I be...oh, I don't know...should I get in the habit of setting out an extra plate for dinner now? Or should I clear out some space in your closet?"

Remembering Kate's warning about details, he cautioned "Alexis...pumpkin...put the brakes on! Yes, I guess we're serious. Without getting into too many details, the 'L' word has been spoken aloud."

"By you or by her?"

"Both."

"Awwww! Daaaadddd! I'm so proud of you! I know that couldn't have been easy for you, with your history."

"What do you mean, my history?"

"I know how many women you've been through over the years. You don't have a great track record with relationships."

"Alexis..." He didn't know what to say. With the exception of Gina, he'd always tried to keep the women away from his little girl. He'd wanted permanence for her, and he'd known that none of them fell into that category, so he'd kept them away, although it seemed now that she knew about them anyway. And suddenly, he wasn't terribly proud of his past life. But now, with Kate, he suddenly couldn't wait for the three of them to spend some time together.

"It's okay, dad. I like her. I really do. And I know she's special to you. You've stayed around her longer than anyone else except for me or Grams. So it's all good."

"Really?"

"Really. In fact," she hesitated, but then forged on, "could you ask her, for me, if maybe she wouldn't mind..."

"What, honey?"

"I have that spring dance at school next month, and I need a dress, and do you think she might be able to go look for dresses with me sometime after you guys get back? Grams could take me, but sometimes her taste...you know. I mean, if she's too busy or she doesn't want to, that's totally fine too."

Rick was touched, so touched that he didn't know what to say for a moment. "Yeah, sweetie. I'm sure she would love to go with you," he told her softly.

"Just don't assume anything, Dad. Just ask her for me, but don't put her on the spot. I don't want her to think that I'm some loser trying to glom onto her just because you guys are more involved now."

"Pumpkin, you're not a loser. She was much more impressed with you that she was with me when we first met, remember? But yes, I'll be happy to ask her for you."

"Thanks. And Dad? Congratulations. It's about time."

"Thanks, sweetie. But can you keep this under wraps until after we're back? We're playing a little joke on Lanie and the boys and if this gets out, it will ruin it."

"Dad!" she admonished. "Wait, you said 'we'. You mean Detective Beckett is in on this too?"

"She sure is. I've brought her over to the dark side," he responded in an evil voice, punctuated by the evil laugh he did so well.

"My lips are sealed," she laughed. "So when will you be back, anyway? I know the trip was kind of open-ended originally, but now that you two are together, to the point of speaking the 'L' word to each other, I suppose you want to say for as long as you can? Kind of like a honeymoon type of thing?"

"Alexis!" he exclaimed, stunned by the implications of what went along with the word 'honeymoon'.

"Well, come on, Dad! You've known each other for _how_ long? You based a character off of her, started a series of books basically about her, remember? She knows you so well. You get this look on your face whenever you talk about her. You have for a while. And you just admitted you guys love each other. So isn't that the next logical step?"

"Whoa, whoa! We just got together. That's pretty heavy. We can't go there." _Yet._ The word just popped into his head, making him suddenly feel like he didn't have enough air in his lungs. Where did _that_ come from?

"Yet," she said, immediately echoing that thought that had popped into his brain, causing him to hold his phone away from his head again to look at it. '_How DOES she do that?'_ he thought. Putting his phone back to his ear, he heard her say, "Dad, it's okay. It's cool. Don't freak."

"I'm not...freaking. It's just that that whole idea is way, way out of scope."

"Okay, fine. But Dad? It is SO not out of the realm of possibility. I know you can't see it, well, yet anyway, but I can. Grams can. And you know, it's cool with me. Really. Just don't mess it up. Detective Beckett is really nice."

"Alexis!" was the only thing he could say. He just could not formulate another thing to say along this train of thought. Grasping the first topic he could think of, the most recent topic before the conversation had deviated into alien territory, he said "Kate hasn't said anything, but we'll probably fly back either Saturday or Sunday."

"Sounds good, Dad."

Although Rick still felt a bit nonplussed by the direction that his daughter had taken, he managed to chat for several more minutes with her before saying goodbye after promises to call soon. Kate found him sitting in the same spot 15 minutes later, staring off into space. She walked up right in front of him before he noticed her, and his expression worried her, especially knowing that he'd just been talking to his daughter.

"Rick. Rick. Castle!" she called to him, as her voice got progressively louder. "RICK!" she finally said as she bent down in front of him. "Is Alexis all right?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, absently, finally noticing her. "She got an A on her physics exam."

"That's great! I hated physics. So what's wrong? Did you want her to get a C because it's the first letter of 'Castle' or something?"

He forced himself to look at her. And once he looked at her, really looked, it wasn't hard to smile because he always wanted to smile when he looked at Kate. "No. Nothing is wrong. And she doesn't even like physics, yet she still got an A. Weird kid."

"Okaaayyyy," she said, letting it go for now but not really understanding why he was so preoccupied, nor the abrupt shift that transformed him back to 'normal Castle'. She chewed on her lip for a second before asking "Did you tell her about us?"

"Yes and no. She knows, but I didn't have to tell her. She guessed."

"She guessed? How? What did you tell her before we came down here? You said you weren't planning any of this-you and me-when we came down here."

He held up his hands in a defensive, 'don't shoot me' type of position. "I wasn't planning it! I have no idea how she knew, but I just started to try to tell her, and then all of a sudden she just came out with it and ask me if something _finally_ happened between us."

"So what did you tell her?"

"The truth. Well, not the X rated stuff, of course. But I told her we were serious."

Kate was back to nervously chewing on her lip. She liked Alexis, even though she didn't know her that well, and she realized that she desperately wanted Rick's daughter to approve of them. "And she said...?"

"Something to the effect of that it was about time, and she used the words 'great' and 'cool' a couple of times."

"She's not mad? Are you sure?"

"From that response? Positive. She did want me to ask you something though, and she says it's totally okay if you don't want to. She wants to know if you'd go shopping with her to help her find a dress for a school dance that's coming up."

"She wants ME to go with her? What about Martha?" Kate was touched.

"She said something about my mother's taste not meshing with hers. But she doesn't want you to feel obligated."

"No...no. It's good." She smiled at him. "I think it would be fun to go with her. But I don't want to step on Martha's toes."

"I suspect my mother will be tickled that you'll be taking Alexis, maybe even more excited than Alexis will be. She likes you too, you know."

She didn't respond. She was biting her lip, and he knew something was troubling her. He brushed some hair from her face, not really because she needed it, but just because he wanted an excuse to touch her. "What's wrong, Kate?"

"You and I, we've come a long way in the last few days. But to everyone else, everything is still the same. If I start spending more time around your family when we get back, I don't want her to think I'm trying to glom onto you or something. I worry that people will think that I'm using Alexis as a means to an end, with you being the end. God, that sounds so pathetic. The _thought_ of that is so pathetic."

To Kate's astonishment, Rick threw back his head and laughed. "What's so funny?" she asked, getting irritated. She didn't share her feelings easily, and then to have someone she trusted laugh at her; well, that was not a good way to proceed.

"I'm sorry, but it's just so funny. Alexis said almost the exact same thing to me on the phone when she was asking me to ask you to take her shopping. She wanted to make sure I didn't put you on the spot so-quote-she doesn't think I'm some loser trying to glom on to her-end quote. Seriously, if she wants you to take her shopping, and you want to go, then you both should just go. Spend some of my money. Have a good time. Bond. You both know the real story. Don't let what anyone else says influence what you do."

"Easier said than done," she muttered.

He put his hands on her arms and gave them a quick rub. "YOU do not have to worry about anything. Anyone who really needs to know what's going on will already know what's going on. And anyone else...they don't matter. So don't worry about it now. Worry about it when there's something to worry about. Okay?"

She looked at him, wondering how he could just brush off the implications, the possibilities, so easily. But then she looked again at the cocky grin and the twinkling eyes, and looked again at their surroundings-the beach mansion with the waves crashing outside-and she decided, for once, to just listen to him. She reached forward and wrapped her arms around him and looked up at his face.

"Okay."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They walked up to the bedroom together. After reaching the door, he pulled her around to face him. "So, tell me exactly how tired you're feeling tonight," he said as he leaned forward to nuzzle her neck. "Because either way is okay, but I would just like to go on record as saying that if you're not terribly tired, I would certainly not turn down the chance to rock your world."

She nuzzled his neck in return. "I would love for you to rock my world. But as it happens, I'm feeling a little...regretful."

He knew where things were going. "Beckett..."

"Don't 'Beckett' me. I told you I feel bad about how I acted that morning. So as it happens, I've figured out a way to try to make it up to you."

"I told you, you don't have to worry about it."

"Rick, I was a total and complete bitch to you. That's not cool with me, no matter how I was feeling. So let me make it up to you. I've...planned something."

"Oh, really? This sounds interesting."

"It could be. Can you be patient for a few minutes?"

"Of course." He aimed a charming smile at her.

"Rick. Come on. I know you. If 'patience' and 'Richard Castle' were in a dictionary together, it would be under the heading of opposites."

"Actually, the literary term would be 'antonyms'."

"Whatever. But I mean it. Can I trust you for just a few minutes? Because if I can't, then the deal is off. If I can trust you...well...let's just say that you will never think of certain things in the same way ever again.

"Intriguing," he said with a bemused look on his face.

"Is that a 'yes, you can trust me, Kate?' or a 'no, don't bother, Kate, because I can't stand to act like an adult for two minutes'?"

He sighed. "Fine. It's a 'yes, you can trust me, Kate.'

She patted his cheek. "Good. You won't regret it. IF you don't peek. And if you do, I guarantee that you WILL regret it." With that, she scurried off to the bathroom in the master suite and shut the door.

He walked over to the bed and sat down. Proactively, he folded back the blankets so just the sheet was showing. He bounced on the bed a few times. Then he kicked off his shorts. But still, there was no sign of Kate emerging from the bathroom. He walked over to the bathroom door, ready to knock and ask her if she needed any help.

Just then, he heard a strange noise coming from the bathroom, one that he'd heard before but he couldn't place. "What are you doing in there? What is that noise?"

He heard her muffled shout. "Shut up, Castle, and stop trying to ruin your surprise." After that, he heard the muffled sound of the water running in the bathroom sink. After another minute or two, she yelled out, "I'm ready now. Close your eyes so I can come out."

"Kaaaaattteeee!" he whined.

"Do you want your surprise or not?"

"Okay, fine. My eyes are closed." Well, mostly. Whatever she had planned, he wasn't going to miss a moment of it just from a silly condition to keep his eyes closed.

"Rick, I'm serious. Swear on your daughter's life that you're not peeking."

Darn, she had him there. He fully closed his eyes and said, "I swear on Alexis' life that I'm not peeking. I even have my hands over my eyes."

Kate poked her head out of the bathroom to verify that he was telling the truth. Surprisingly, he was; he even had his palms over his eyes, which prevented him peeking through his fingers. She stepped into the main part of the bedroom and carefully walked until she was about five feet in front of him before striking a pose with one hand on her hip and her chest jutting out a bit.

"Can't you even give me a little hint? Is it red again, like that bikini?"

"Nope. It's white this time. Well, it does have a little bit of red."

"Skimpy?"

"You could say that. Kind of...non permanent too, so I guess you'd better open your eyes."

Rick opened his eyes and as they focused again, he stared at what was standing in front of him.

He blinked once, and then twice.

His jaw fell open.

He felt the blood draining from his head and everywhere else down to parts south of his waist. In fact, he felt a little faint.

Because Kate was standing there in front of him, her hair piled on top of her head in a sexy tangle of curls, her lips painted bright red, and she was naked, except for...for...'_oh, my God_,' he thought.

Finally, he found his voice, although it came out in somewhat of a squeak. "Is that...on your...and are those...on top of...?"

She smiled a sultry smile at him. In one of the most sexy tones he'd ever heard pass her lips, those sex-goddess red lips, she supplied the words he couldn't seem to formulate.

"Yes. You get me...for dessert...complete with whipped cream and cherries on top."

Despite the confirmation of her words, despite the fact that they had been together intimately several times already, Rick could only stare at her, a fantasy personified, standing in front of him. He'd seen a lot of things, done a lot of things, but this...she...was almost too much for him to handle.

She stood there in front of him, naked, but not really naked exactly, because she had used squirtable whipped cream to draw a bikini, of sorts, right on her body. She had whipped cream covering her breasts, swirled around the mounds until it formed a point over what he knew was the nipple underneath. And on each point was a bright red cherry. And the whipped cream also covered the juncture in between her thighs.

"Bam. Said. The. Lady."

She laughed, low and sensual-sounding. "You like my new...attire?"

"I think I could eat you alive." His simple words and the hungry way he stared at her, basically confirming what he'd said, ignited the familiar fire within her belly.

"Isn't that the idea?"

He still didn't move toward her though, which prompted her to take a small step in his direction so she could run a fingertip down his chest. His eyes stayed glued to the whipped delicacy that was now her chest. "As much as I love that you seem to be enjoying just looking at your little present, if you don't start to do something pretty soon, I'm going to start to melt."

"We can't have that, now can we?" he responded in a husky tone as he dipped his head toward her bosom. Sticking out his tongue, he licked a dollup of whipped cream off the side of her breast. "Umm...yummy." He repeated his action on the other side. "But you know, I think I'd prefer if my dessert was in a horizontal position to make it easier to...eat."

After she was laying down on the bed, he stripped his shirt off and stretched out next to her. Still, he just stared at her for a moment, prompting her to remind him "Rick? Melting?"

"Say no more. I'm on the job."

And, oh, he was! He started with her right breast, licking off all of the whipped cream, going in circles around it, making sure to caress and tickle her with his tongue in the process. He ate the cherry on the peak, before leaning down to lick some of the cream off the nipple. After the first lick, he closed his mouth on the whipped cream and his eyes flew to hers. His eyes narrowed and a smile dawned on his face. "Ooo, you're good, Detective. Would that be..." he pursed his lips and looked up in the air, trying to figure it out. Then looking back at her with a victorious smile, he said, "caramel?"

She smiled and nodded, stretching her arms up over her head. "Got in in one guess."

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you?"

"Of course. You doubted me?"

"Never. I'm just beginning to understand your level of creativity, though. And I must say that I like it. I really, really like it." With that, he moved back to her breast and started licking the rest of the whipped cream off of it. When he got to the caramel she'd put around her nipple, he attacked the sticky substance first with his tongue, but then began sucking the caramel off the protruding tip. Kate closed her eyes as the sensations of his tongue and the suction of his mouth caused the fire in her belly to burn hotter. A small moan escaped her lips. When the whipped cream and then the caramel on her nipple had been fully removed, he kissed his way up her body, nibbling on her neck, then moving up to to capture her mouth in a hot, sultry kiss. She could taste the sweetness of the caramel and whipped cream on his tongue as it swept around her mouth.

Breaking away, he looked deeply into her eyes. "I really like caramel," he murmured as he moved down to take care of the 'bikini bottom' between her thighs.

She knew it would come to this, when he would take care of the lower half of her 'suit', and she tried to steel herself against what she knew would be a sensual onslaught from his very talented mouth. This whole little piece of bedroom drama was for him, to make up for her bitchiness when she had her marching band percussion headache. She tried to remain detached, so she could save her energy and have a clear head for driving him wild. But it just was _not_ working. She wanted him now; oh, how she wanted him!

Even though she wasn't watching him-she couldn't even bother to open her eyes, much less lift her head because she felt so boneless due to his ministrations-she felt his tongue start to devour the whipped cream south of her waist. She felt him urge her legs apart just a bit. And then, even though she didn't put any whipped cream in anywhere terribly intimate, she found that his tongue apparently didn't care so much about the actual location of the whipped cream when she felt his fingers spread her folds apart gently, then felt his tongue probing deeper in between her legs, in search of her most sensitive spot. When he did that, he started to devour the tenuous hold on her control as surely as he had just devoured the whipped cream.

This idea of hers was backfiring royally. She felt the tip of his tongue touch her _there_ as her hands fisted in the sheets. She had to try to stop him. "Rick!" she panted. She tried ineffectually to move him away. She'd heard once that the tongue was the most agile muscle in the human body, and he was certainly proving that now. "Rick," she tried again. "No...you can't...you need to stop...this is for you, not me. You can't..." she trailed off. He didn't appear to be listening.

Against her core, he murmured "Oh, yes I can. And you're not going to stop me, are you? You want this." Feeling his hot breath down aroused her more, if that was possible.

"Nooo...Yes!" She didn't even know what question she was answering anymore. But then he bent his lips to her and briefly sucked on that intimate spot just a bit, before flicking the tip of his tongue out again. Suck...flick. Suck...flick. And she was lost. Her control was shattered. She was gone.

A loud, strangled moan escaped her throat as she arched on the bed, her hips bucking uncontrollably. She grabbed his hair to hold his head in place, all thoughts of getting him to stop forgotten as she succumbed to her release.

When the aftershocks subsided, her arms limply fell to her sides again as he began to trail kisses up her body. "That was"-kiss-"unbelievably"-kiss-"_hot_," he told her on the way. "But I see that I still haven't 'eaten' part of my dessert."

Vaguely, she realized that he was right; she still had one breast covered in whipped cream. With the heat that had just been generated, she wondered how the pile of stuff hadn't melted down off of her into a pile of goo on the sheets by now. He'd moved himself to her other side, and he made short order of the whipped cream on that breast, quickly finding the treat underneath. And despite the fact that he had just almost rendered her into a boneless and melting piece of sensual mush, she could tell that she was headed that way again as he began sucking on and teasing her other nipple.

"Ah, hot fudge on this one, I see. You really know how to serve a dessert to a man." Now that her body was devoid of whipped cream, he kissed his way up toward her mouth as his body moved over hers. When she felt his weight on hers and felt his hard manhood pressing into her hip, her mind engaged once again. Her eyes flew open and found his smiling down at her, dark with passion. She smiled back at him and pushed him so he rolled over. Straddling him, she leaned over so her nipples were brushing his chest and her lips were inches from his. "I'll be right back," she said as she raised up over him.

With obvious surprise, he watched as she climbed off of him and went into the bathroom. His puzzled look changed to one of when he saw her come back and crawl on the bed, holding the squirtable whipped cream. "Kate, I don't need any more of that. You're all the dessert that I need."

She smiled a seductive little smile, pulling her lower lip in between her teeth. "This isn't for you. Because now I need _my_ dessert." And she lowered herself toward him, and gently stroked his erection.

His eyes got huge as he realized what she had in store for him. "Oh, my God, Kate." He tried to scoot back away from her, but she grabbed his manhood, as if anticipating what he was going to do. "You can't...Kate, after everything before, I can't stand..."

"No fair, Rick. I need my dessert, and I decided it's you with whipped cream on top. And I'd think that you, of all people, wouldn't mind being..." she said breathily as she leaned in toward his mouth, "...eaten."

She didn't think his eyes could get any bigger, but they did. She told him, "Just go with it, Rick, because attempts to escape will be futile." Then she held his shaft up straight as she squirted whipped cream all over it.

"Geez, Kate, that's cold!" he told her as he flinched back at the first contact.

"I know, tell me about it! It's refrigerated, remember?"

"Well at least it may calm me down a little bit," he muttered, mainly to himself.

"Not too much, I hope," she responded as she bent down toward him. And as much as he wanted to not see what she was doing so he could hold out longer, he couldn't bear to tear his eyes away from her as she reached down to him. Somehow she knew he was watching, and she turned her head back to look at his face, her sultry smile nearly his undoing before she turned back toward her object of interest, sticking out her tongue and tasting the whipped cream, as her tongue came in contact with his hard shaft, trailing up the length of him and tasting the whipped cream there.

"Ummm...tasty," she murmured.

"Kate..."

"Rick, that was just a little taste. Now I need to really...eat." And with that, she reached down and took him full into her mouth.

Looking at the sight of those ruby red lips around his most intimate body part was more than he could stand to watch. The feel of her hot mouth was enough; he thought if he kept watching her mouth trying to milk him, he would erupt right then and there. He let his head fall back on the bed, closing his eyes, and now it was his turn to fist his hands in the sheets as she continued to stroke her tongue on his shaft, licking him. Sometimes she barely touched him, sometimes she took him entirely into her mouth, sucking him and driving him wild in the process. Rick didn't know how the cold whipped cream could even stay there; with the heat they were generating, he would have bet money that it it would have long ago evaporated into thin air.

Repeating her actions from before, he was now the one who was begging her to stop. "Kate...please. No more. My God..." She stopped for a moment, registering his ragged breaths as he struggled to regain control, but then she bent and sucked again on his shaft, just a little bit to let him know that she was still there. "Kate, no...I want us...together." With that, he gently pulled her head up, but then faster than she could blink, he grabbed her arms and flipped her down on the bed, rolling on top of her and driving her legs apart with his own in one swift motion, positioning himself right at her entrance. His face was right above hers when he told her hoarsely, "You said this was my treat, my surprise. Well this is what I want. Us, together. Now." And with that, he drove into her fiercely, as she cried out, as did he, with the intensity of the sensation of being joined together, finally, after all of the foreplay.

And after all of that foreplay, he didn't know how he lasted much more than a couple of thrusts, but he did. Somehow, he made himself last until Kate was ready again.

Kate didn't know how he could do it, how he could last so long. But she just knew that she couldn't, not with what he did to her, with the feeling of him inside of her. She raised her legs and wrapped them around him, trying to pull him closer to her, further inside of her if that was possible. She could feel him moving past her sweet spot as he drove into her, and she could only urge him on as he rode her but telling him "Faster...more..." in breathy pants. And then, just as she was starting to see stars and feel all of the nerve endings in her body start to tingle, she heard him say "Kate, please, come for me. Come with me."

The husky plea was all she needed to let her body go, and she screamed his name as her body began involuntarily jerking against his, while he pounded into her with the last bit of rational thought he could muster before he gave up as his body succumbed to the feeling of her release. He panted her name and other nonsensical things into her shoulder, letting the sensations and the emotions overtake him, just as she had done only seconds before.

And instead of talking, instead of uttering even one word, Rick simply moved off of her after he caught his breath. He turned on his side toward her, and he put his arm around her waist to anchor her to him. And as she drifted off to sleep, with her hand over his, she was thinking that he was holding her so closely that even an earthquake wouldn't be able to separate them. And that was a good thing, because there was no way she she wanted him to be anywhere else, and there was no way that she was letting him go.

_**

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I hope everyone has a wonderful start to 2011!

_**I'd love to know if you liked how Kate made it up to Rick for being so bitchy and going off on him when she had her headache a few chapters ago. I thought the squirtable whipped cream was quite fitting considering I've seen it in a few episodes and, in the context that I used, was a good reward for him, but I'd be interested to hear what you all think of it.**_

_**Alexis' physics test? Even though he'll never know about it, that was my own little 'feed the birds' moment to my nephew, who is a sophomore in college and just pulled off a 4.0 for the fall semester, including a 100% on his physics test, and he doesn't really even like physics. The kid is seriously a brain. And he has a personality too.**_

_**Don't worry, they're still going to send Lanie the text...they just got preoccupied for a bit. Really preoccupied. ;-) And I thought that was a good place to end it too.**_

_**Please review **__**and let me know what you think! (Really, seriously, please review!) You're all wonderful! And I LOVE to know what you think. Let's start the new year off with a bang!**_


	30. Chapter 30

_****_

Many thanks to those that reviewed the last chapter! I appreciate hearing from you...really. I know that sounds probably sounds kind of lame, with this being chapter 30, but I truly do appreciate all of the reviews, and I LOVE seeing new alerts in my inbox. Really. Sincerely.

_**Disclaimer: Wish I owned the characters, but I don't.**_

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Kate felt a tickle in her ear. It was a persistent tickle that wouldn't go away. And then she realized that it was caused by air; more specifically by someone's breath right by her ear. Realizing who the breath belonged to, she rolled more on her back as she stretched one arm up over her head, turning her head to look at the man beside her.

Rick smiled at her sleepily. "I didn't really want to wake you, but I opened my eyes when I moved before and I saw that it's after one. Thought you might want to send that text to the good doctor before it gets much later."

"Mmmm..." she murmured as she rolled toward him more and stretched into his body, giving him a kiss. "Where's my phone?"

"I dunno."

"S'probly downstairs. I'll go get it." She gave him another kiss and then crawled out of bed, reaching over to the chair to grab the short white silk robe she'd left laying there.

He watched her tie the sash around her waist. "Kate, why are you bothering to put on a robe?"

She stopped in mid-tie at his words. "I don't know. Force of habit, I guess. I'm not used to running around my apartment naked, so I guess the same thing applies here."

"Uh, the beach? Remember? That's a bit more public than this and you didn't seem to have a problem then."

She pointed a finger at him. "THAT was your fault, buster. I had a suit on when I went down to the beach. YOU are the one that removed it." And with that, she finished tying her sash and went to retrieve her phone.

Rick looked around the moonlit room and thought about her little 'surprise' from earlier. He felt his body responding at just the thought of what had transpired a few hours ago. When he'd told her years ago that they could be good together, and she'd told him 'you have no idea'...boy, was she right. He wasn't prepared for this. He'd always been intrigued with her, and initially, it was just as a conquest. But now...now, things were so different. It wasn't just about sex anymore, which was how so many of his relationships started, and existed. The sex was great, but there was so much more. Like the previous night when they'd just crawled in bed together and went to sleep. And that's all they did...sleep...and he was content with that. As long as she was right there, he was content. Sure, it evolved into something physical later on in the night, but initially, it had just been about being near each other, and that was enough for him. It was a new feeling for him, but he felt totally comfortable with it, and with her.

She walked back in the room carrying the phone, tapping at the phone keys as she walked. She grabbed a pillow and threw it up toward the headboard and leaned up against it as she sat back down on the bed. Her brow was furrowed, and every so often she'd bit her lip in concentration, as if she was unsure of how exactly to word what she was trying to say. Rick loved that look of concentration that she had. He didn't say anything to her, but just ran his fingertips up and down her leg as she composed the message, and he couldn't resist dipping his hand further and further up under her robe with each trip up her thigh. Finally, without even looking at him, she swatted his hand away, telling him that the longer he distracted her from the message, the longer it would be until she took the robe _off_ again.

He fell back on the bed, his arm connecting with something when it flopped over to the other side of him. He looked and it was the can of whipped cream. He picked it up and thought 'why not?', so he squirted some in his mouth. And promptly gagged.

"Ugh!" When the stuff hit his mouth, he started making all sorts of faces and other unintelligible noises. Kate was jolted out of her concentration by his outburst and looked over at him. His mouth was almost closed, but his chest was heaving and he really looked like he wanted to upchuck at any minute. He tried to tell her "Wom wopped keem us awfa!" And he jumped up and ran into the bathroom.

Predictably, she shook her head and rolled her eyes as she went back to her message, typing and deleting as she tried to find the right mix of good information and nonchalance, without mentioning anything too specific so that their switcheroo plan would work later. She was vaguely aware of the water running in the bathroom, and then the sound of him brushing his teeth in the bathroom. "Castle," she shouted to him. "You'd better not be using my toothbrush."

He stuck his head out of the door when she called his name, her pink toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. When he heard the rest of her comment, his face fell into a guilty one, caught in the act. "Oops," he told her and then ducked back into the bathroom.

When he came out of the bathroom a minute later, he cautioned her, "A word of warning: _never_ try whipped cream that's been sitting out for several hours. Blech."

"You owe me a toothbrush," she said in her best interrogation voice. "I can share a lot, Castle, but my toothbrush is mine." She handed him the phone and she changed back into the off-duty and on-vacation version of Kate. "I don't know what to do with this. I didn't think it would be this difficult. I must have deleted it and restarted it at least four times. It's hard trying to balance it with talking about you, but still having it believable that it couldn't be you, combined with the fact that she's my best friend. You're the writer-you figure out what to say."

He read what she had typed so far: "_Seriously falling for him! OMG! He's soooo HOT! Romantic too. Up late tonight, to bed now; will call u later tomrw. Bye."_

He'd plopped down next to her and pulled the sheet up to cover them as he read the message. "Do you actually say 'OMG'?" he asked her.

"It's crap. I know. Don't laugh."

"Well, not totally. Just the part that makes you sound like you're 16. But I really like the part about me being hot, it capital letters no less."

"Technically, it's Dave that's hot, not you."

"I don't like that as well."

"Okay, show me how it's done."

"Being hot? Didn't I do that already? But if you insist..." he asked, waggling his eyebrows at her.

"Yes, it was hot. Steamy, even. But now, writer boy, we need you to show your writing stuff, not your other stuff."

"Writer MAN, Kate. Didn't I prove that to you earlier too?" and leaning in for a kiss.

She pushed him away, knowing how easily they could get distracted. "Phone. Text. Now."

"Do I get another reward?"

"Isn't your reward getting back at Lanie and indirectly, the guys?"

"That's nice, but seeing as how I'm essentially being your ghostwriter, I think I deserve more...payment."

"Fine. But I only pay for services rendered. So render some services."

"Okay." He leaned back and started punching buttons on the phone. After less than a minute, he handed it to her and said "There. I did keep part of your message. It wasn't all crap."

She read: "_Incredible dinner, walked on beach, made out a little. Might need ice water! Going to bed now; will call u later tomrw. Bye."_

"Well?" he asked.

"Sort of blunt, but that's perfect for Lanie. Leaves a little to the imagination too. But just 'a little'?" she asked, using air quotes.

"Hey, it's truthful. We did make out a little-remember the kitchen after the mac and cheese thing?-and then we went past a little into a lot more. You just forget about the 'lot more' when you're talking to her tomorrow."

"Good enough for me." She hit send on the phone to send the message to Lanie.

Then to her surprise, he slowly crawled out of the bed and found his boxers on the floor. After stepping into them, he walked to the door and told her "Okay. Now go to bed."

Kate had followed his actions as he got up, wondering what he was up to. But when he told her to go to bed and started to leave the room, she looked at him as if he'd just sprouted horns. "What? Where are you going, Rick? I thought you wanted to stay here with me." As she talked, he could hear a bit of hurt and concern in her words, before she could mask them into indifference or anything else.

He retraced his steps and went to sit on the side of the bed by her. He gave her a kiss and then leaned his forehead against hers. "Sorry. I was getting ahead of myself with my plotting and I forgot to clue you in. You go to bed alone now, and then if Lanie asks you-WHEN Lanie asks you, because you know she will-you can say, honestly, that yes, you went to bed alone. Because, technically you did. Or you will as soon as I leave. So I'm going to check my email, and then I'll be right back and you can give me your payment for services rendered. Sound okay?"

She touched her lips to his again. "Okay...yeah...sorry. I thought you were...oh, hell. I just never expected you to leave. Kind of threw me."

"You definitely do NOT have to worry about me leaving you. I don't think that's even possible."

"What if I grew facial hair and warts?" she said jokingly.

"I would get you the best electrolysis money could buy and a lot of Compound W. But you would still be extraordinary. Not to mention you'd probably be able to scare the bad guys into confessing by just looking at them."

She rolled her eyes but smiled at him. "Good. I'm going to go to bed now. But I may need some help later taking off this robe."

"I'm your man."

"You certainly are."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick came back to Kate within 15 minutes and crawled into bed silently beside her. She rolled toward him as, without a word, reached for the belt on her robe. When it was untied, he spread it open and slipped his hands inside to feel her bare skin. He rolled on his back and pulled her over him, so she was straddling him. Despite the fact that he'd only been back in bed with her for a minute or two, they were both ready for each other. They came together gently, slowly; totally unlike their last coupling. They were almost relaxed as their bodies rocked in unison. Their eyes locked as they moved together, each just instinctively knowing what the other needed. Rick reached his hands up in the air and Kate twined her fingers with his, as their pace increased. He looked at her, riding him, her eyes closed, and with the robe that she still wore billowing out in back of her from her motion on him, backlit by the soft glow of the outside safety lights coming through the window behind her, and he thought she looked like an angel to him. A sexy angel, because the robe was open in the front and she wore nothing underneath, but still an angel. When she leaned her head back and began to let out some soft breathy sighs, he knew she was an angel-his angel-as she led him to his own little piece of heaven on earth.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As Kate and Rick lay sleeping soundly in Florida's early morning, her upper body and head sprawled across his chest with his one arm resting on her back, Lanie Parrish was waking up in her bed much further north in New York City. She looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw that there was no point in trying to go back to sleep; the alarm would sound within 15 minutes anyway. Out of habit, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand to see if there were any new messages waiting for her. Technically, she was off duty, so she'd put the phone on silent, but sometimes she still got calls.

She was puzzled, but intrigued to find a message from Kate. With a timestamp of 1:24 a.m. Why was she texting Lanie at 1:24 a.m.? Lanie opened the message and read it, then read it again as a slow smile started to form on her face. "It's about time, girl," she said to her friend, as if she was there to hear her. The message didn't really have the juicy details that she was looking for, but at least it confirmed that Kate was finally letting loose with the writer boy a little bit. Didn't seem to be letting loose as much as she thought Kate should have been by now, what with being alone with the guy for a week, but at least it was something, she thought, nodding to herself. Progress was progress. She couldn't wait to tell the guys.

She thought about it, and then she decided to go for it. She hit 'reply' on her phone and texted the two words back to her friend: "Bed...alone?"

And if Kate and Rick would have seen her at that moment, they would have been high-fiving and congratulating each other on the feeling of a plan coming together.

_**

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**_

That's it for now.

_**In the next couple of chapters, we're going to meet the new friends again and hang out with them a bit more. And I've started writing the big moment when they try to convince Lanie it's not Castle that she hooked up with, but Dave. It popped into my head so I had to write it down, even though we're not quite there yet. I already like it, so I'm hoping that by the time I get ready to post it, it will be amazingly awesome!**_

_**This was shorter than some of the recent chapters of this story, but I'm hoping that a shorter chapter, but updated a bit sooner after the previous one, will keep people interested in the story a little better.**_

_**I just have to say...I ***LOVE*** this show! Just finished watching 'Nikki Heat'...OMG! I sooooo have to watch this ep again tomorrow!**_

_**Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter, and you know: review? Please? Pretty please? They're like (good) drugs to my productivity and inspiration levels. Love 'em. Absolutely love 'em. And I love all of you wonderful people for continuing to read my story. Thanks!**_


	31. Chapter 31

_**Chapter 31 is here...Enjoy!**_

_**Disclaimer: Don't own anyone. If I did, then I wouldn't be sitting here dying of anticipation of 3x13.**_

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"Oh. My. God. How do you do this, Castle? Ugh!"

They'd changed into swimsuits and were eating a light breakfast out on the back deck. It was a light breakfast because it was already late morning because they'd slept in...along with doing other things that just came naturally, being in a bed and both of them being in a certain state of undress. Now, Kate had gone to get her phone to charge it, and when she came back, she had a somewhat annoyed look on her face.

"How do I do what?" he asked her, his brows crinkling in confusion.

She tossed her phone at his belly as she sat down. "That."

He caught it and looked at the phone, seeing it had a text message from Lanie from hours earlier. He read it and a smile bloomed on his face. "Told you she wouldn't be able to resist."

"But she's _my_ best friend. _I_ should have thought of it."

"Nah." He took a sip of his coffee. "You were just so caught up in crafting the 'perfect' message that you didn't think about that little detail. That's why we work well together. I get the details that you miss and vice versa. You've pointed out things about Alexis to me that I didn't see, and I'm her father. Same thing. Sometimes you're too close to the situation. Can't see the forest for the trees and all that."

She just sniffed at him because she was still annoyed that he had been able to predict with precision accuracy that Lanie would pick up on the 'going to bed' part of the message and run with it. He grinned at her but didn't say anything, and then silently reached over to refill her coffee cup in a show of comfort; to Kate, her coffee was meaningful, and keeping her supplied with coffee was like giving her a hug. Rick picked up her phone again and started punching keys.

"What are you doing?"

"Replying to Lanie, of course."

"Of course," she said dryly. "So are you going to share with the class, Rick?"

"Sure. Here." He handed her the phone and she skimmed the quick message.

_"yes, went to bed alone, but really tempted otherwise ;)"_

She looked up in the air as if thinking about something, and then smiled and started pushing buttons on the phone. "What are you doing?" he asked her.

"Setting the scene a litte more. I think..." she said as she finished tapping a few more buttons, "...that I may have some of my deviosity back."

"Deviosity?"

"The talent of being devious."

"Kate, I don't think that's a word."

"I don't care. It should be. How about you just follow your own advice and go with it. We're on vacation."

"I think the word would be deviousness. But if it makes you happy, then I love your deviosity. Even though it does pain me a little bit to say it like it's a real word. Just make sure the quality-whatever you call it-isn't directed at me."

"That would be no fun at all." She punctuated her statement with a glare, followed by an an evil little smile that made Rick swallow pointedly.

"You scare me sometimes, Beckett."

"Somebody has to keep you in line. Here. Read." She handed him the phone back, so he could read the expanded message.

_"yes, went to bed alone, but really tempted otherwise ;) Don't want to rush into the rel'ship thing too fast."_

"That last line will annoy her to no end because she's been talking about us hooking up for a couple of years, and she still thinks it's you we're talking about. So she's going to want to punch me for not jumping you because she won't think this would be 'rushing it' at_ all_, but when we do the bait and switch with Dave, then it will make sense if she thinks back to the text. So what do you think?" she rambled.

He stared at her with a puzzled look on his face. "That I'm shocked but very impressed that you just said all of that in one breath?"

"Focus, Castle! The _message_?"

"It works." He smiled. "Actually, I think it will work really well."

Good. She sent the message. "So what are we going to do today?"

He merely waggled his eyebrows at her and gave her a sexy smile.

"Not _that_, Rick. My muscles are already feeling it from our little diversions last night and this morning. If you have any hope of getting lucky tonight, then I need a little break today."

"Yes, we did get a little frisky this morning. But you're in such good shape. You're always working out in the gym or running or whatever."

"Correction. I _was_ in such good shape. I've only ran twice since we've been down here. Holding onto a fence above an alligator doesn't really count as cardio, you know. And if you want to train for something, then you have to do that thing. You can't train for swimming by running. And this...this might be the most intensive training I've done in this particular sport for quite a while."

He looked like he was about to say something that she didn't want to hear, delving into the uncomfortable topic of past lovers, and she cautioned sternly, "Don't go there, Castle."

He stopped, looked at her, and blinked. "Yeah, that probably would not have been a good thing to bring up."

"Do you really want to know anyway?"

He seemed like he was thinking about it, but then he got an expression on his face that was a mixture of bewilderment and horror. "Now that I think about it, no."

"Good. I don't want to hear about it from you either."

"Deal." Then his expression changed, became lighter and more like the cocky Rick she knew. "But can I offer to be your personal trainer for that particular sport?"

"Do you think I _need_ a personal trainer for that particular sport?" she asked seductively, trailing a finger down his arm.

"Uh...n..nooo," he stammered.

"Or I could maybe be _your_ personal trainer?"

His lips curved into a half smile and he raised one eyebrow. "You're hired. And I'll look forward to participating in your training regimen later tonight then."

"I'll pencil in an appointment for you."

"Better use a permanent marker. I won't be canceling."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"I had another idea," she told him later as they walked on the beach in the midday sunshine.

"You're just full of good ideas lately. But personally, I think that idea that you had last night with the whipped cream...now THAT was really-" he paused as he realized that she wasn't by him anymore. Puzzled, he turned around and found her glaring at him, hands on her hips.

"Rick, we've determined beyond the shadow of a doubt that we're good together in bed. And in the shower, and in the ocean, and on the couch and even on the bathroom counter this morning..."

"And don't forget the pool!" he reminded her, with a somewhat manic tone to his voice and a kid-in-the-candy-store look on his face.

"Yes, the pool too." She paused a moment, because counting all of the places they had made love was starting to get her a bit aroused, but she needed to have a level head for both of them so she made herself roll her eyes at Rick and adopt a stern tone with him. "We're good together, but we can't think about that ALL the time. So please try to pull your mind away from that topic, okay?"

He stretched his arms out and gave an all-body shake. "Got it. All gone. Now what was your idea?"

She glared at him for a moment, doubting his abrupt change in demeanor. But she walked forward and began walking with him again, linking her hand with his.

"What if I call Ryan and put on a little show for him? Give him something to think about."

He looked at her sideways. "I think I like the sound of that. Tell me all about it."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"Ryan." he answered, sounding distracted.

"Hey, Ryan. It's Beckett."

"Beckett! Hey, how are you doing down there?" He sat back in his chair, everything else temporarily forgotten. "Did you kill Castle yet? Forget it, scratch that. I guess from that last video you sent, killing him is the last thing on your mind now? Huh?" he asked her, chuckling at the end.

She didn't pretend to not know that he was talking about the alligator video with her sitting on Rick's lap. She just verbally shrugged it off, not making a big deal of it, like she and Rick had already agreed would be the best course of action. "Temporary aberration, Ryan, that's all. The sun down here makes you do weird things. And killing Castle is still definitely on the table, depending on how annoying he is. But that's not what I wanted to ask you about."

"Shoot. Need a good dump site for the body? I found a really good topographic mapping website..."

"No. But thanks for the offer. And bookmark that website. Anyway, I was wondering..." Kate injected a bit of uncertainty into her voice, a quality that wasn't normally there. "Okay, let's just say I hypothetically met this guy and we hooked up. And so far it's just kind of fun and the guy is...I really like him, you know? Hypothetically, of course."

"Does this hypothetical guy have a name?" Esposito, who had been only somewhat listening to Ryan's end of the conversation, perked up in his chair as he sat across from Ryan.

"A name? Uh, sure...uh, call him, uh...Dave." Kate smiled to herself, thinking that she couldn't have set that one up more beautifully if she had tried. She hoped she stammered enough when she 'thought' of the name.

"Dave. Okay, sure. So, uh, Castle is okay with you hooking up with this, uh, Dave?" Ryan couldn't help but ask, trying to bait her into giving him more juicy details. Esposito's eyes narrowed but Ryan waved him off.

"Oh, yeah, Castle is great. He's just great. He and Dave, uh...they're really kind of...similar, so it all worked out. Hypothetically speaking, you know."

"I'll just bet they're similar," Ryan responded. Kate heard the humor and innuendo in his voice; so far, so good.

"So anyway, hypothetically," she began again, getting to her point. "you're a guy..."

Ryan interrupted, "No, not hypothetical, I AM a guy. You can ask Jenny." This response earned Ryan a strange look from Esposito, who was still watching Ryan's end of the conversation.

"Ryan, I know you're a guy. But I really don't want to go there. And don't interrupt. So anyway, hypothetically," she began again, a bit louder and more stern with her tone, before she softened it back to her normal voice for the question. "I was just wondering...if I wanted to do something nice for uh, Dave, down here, uh, what would you suggest? I mean, you're a guy...we've established that, so if you weren't attached and _met_ someone on vacation, what would you like to do with her?" She emphasized the word 'met' just a little bit, in keeping with her ruse.

Ryan held the phone away from his ear and looked at it. Putting it back, he said "Uh, Beckett? Duh. That sun must really be getting to you if you have to ask me a question like that."

"Geez, Ryan, I can figure that one out on my own. No, I don't mean _that_. I mean...other stuff. Things you can do in public and not get arrested. Guys don't like to go strolling through shops, you know? What would I do if I wanted to plan something and surprise a guy? A public thing, Ryan."

"Uh..." He sat back in his chair and thought out loud. "Beach vacation? I guess I'd want to try one of those deep sea fishing charter boats. And maybe rent some wave runners and see how high you can jump on the waves."

"Oooo, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks, Ryan."

"Any time. So you and this, uh, Dave have really hit it off? Hypothetically, of course."

"Yeah. It's great. _Really_, um...yeah. I never expected this. But hypothetically.

"Oh, of course."

"So, have you had any good cases since I've been gone?"

"A couple, but nothing really Beckett-flavored."

"Well, it sounds like you guys are doing fine. Say hi to Esposito for me, huh?"

"Will do. And Beckett? Have fun with _Dave_." The way he said the name left no doubt in Kate's mind that he thought 'Dave' was a pseudonym for 'Castle'.

"Oh, I'm sure I will! Bye."

She ended the call and went to go find Rick, who she was sure was jumping out of his skin because she wouldn't let him listen to her end of the call. She didn't want to be distracted, and with his mindset today, she knew he would definitely distract her.

She found him trying to boogie board down at the beach. When he saw her, he grabbed the board and walked out of the water. "Well?" he asked.

"Don't quit your day job to go on the competitive boogie boarding circuit."

"Funny ha ha. How did your talk with Ryan go?"

"Hook, line and sinker. And I have to take 'Dave' deep-sea fishing or rent some wave-runners."

"Huh? Dave? I thought we weren't going to introduce Dave this fast." He was starting to get nervous that their plan was backfiring before it really got started.

She patted him on his wet shoulder. "It's not like that. Relax. Worked out better than I could have predicted. When I started talking about this hypothetical guy, Ryan asks if he has a name. So I just kind of stammered to make it seem like I was making something up because I didn't want to admit it was you. And then I told Ryan to 'call him Dave'. So he did." She looked at him slyly. "Pretty good, huh?" she asked, obviously proud of how it turned out.

He gave her a quick kiss. "You're excellent, as always. So what now? Deep-sea fishing or wave runners, you said?" She nodded. "We can do that. Let's go up and make some calls. Should we see if Joelle and the real Dave are free for dinner tonight?"

"Sounds good to me."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As soon as Ryan hung up his phone, he sat for a minute and grinned at Esposito like that cat that just eaten the canary. Then he jumped up and said "Come on!" to Esposito, heading for the elevator.

"Where are we going? And are you going to tell me about that little conversation you had just now? And who's Dave?"

"We're going to see Lanie. And I'll tell you both at the same time." He stabbed at the down button on the elevator and didn't say anything else.

But when the elevator doors opened, they found Lanie inside, and she looked about ready to burst. She practically bulldozed past them, but grabbed their shirt sleeves and started hauling them with her. "Break room, now," she ordered.

When they got to the room, she shut the door. Luckily, the room was empty. "Beckett..." she began.

"...and Castle finally got together!" Ryan finished, not able to contain himself any longer.

Lanie looked at him with confusion. "How did you know?"

"Just talked to her. She said that she _hypothetically_ met some dude down there and they hooked up. You all know what THAT means. Hypothetical guy, yeah, right. Ha! I asked her what his name was and she just hemmed and hawed and then said 'Dave'. May I repeat, yeah, right! Then she wanted to know what she could do with him that he would like."

Lanie just raised her eyebrow at him.

"Yeah, I suggested that, but she wanted a public activity, so I suggested deep sea fishing.

Lanie was lost in thought for a minute. "It's good they're finally doing something more than just looking at each other all the time. God, I thought they were going to either spontaneously combust from all of those hot looks or burn a hole through the floor where they stood. But really, I can't believe they're still not getting their freak on in between the sheets."

"Huh? They're not? Why'd you say that?" Esposito wanted to know.

She showed him the last couple of text messages on her phone. "Read 'em and weep."

"Huh." Espo said again. "What's she mean by fast? This ain't fast."

Lanie looked him and took her phone back. "You know it and I know it, but they've been dodging each other for so long that maybe it seems fast to them. I have no idea. I stopped understanding a long time ago how they could resist that spark between them so long. But as long as they're together now, and they still have almost a week left down there, I'm good. I just hope that girl keeps feeding me information."

Espo, Ryan and Lanie all nodded before Ryan broke the silence.

"So who won the pool?" Ryan wanted to know.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

While Kate showered, Rick called the other couple and made plans to meet them for dinner. He also checked their schedule for the next few days, and finding out they had no definite plans, asked if they'd like to go on any excursions with him and Kate in the name of their involvement in the plan to fool Lanie. After getting their okay for that, he called his contact to arrange the details.

When Kate came downstairs again, she asked Rick, "So do you think Ryan has talked to Lanie yet?"

"I would bet money on it," he told her, and they high fived each other with smug smiles on their faces.

_**

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**_

The next few chapters are slowly coming together in my head, along with some of the 'back in NYC' moments. I have a few surprises in store for you all, so be sure to stay tuned!

_**Something I'm wondering...too much dialog? **_

_**Reviews? Please? Pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry on top (in honor of the last chapter)?**_

_**Also, if anyone wants to check out something else I wrote, I posted another little one-shot a couple of days ago about the aftermath of the kiss from 3x13...it's called 'Letting Go'. It was intended to be a one-shot, going through what would be like a season finale, but several people have story-alerted it or said I should continue, so I don't know...I may have to write a bit more on it.**_


	32. Chapter 32

_**Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present chapter 32!**_

_**Continued, sincere thanks to all of you who take the time to leave reviews. I still truly appreciate them very much! A special shout-out to gmay, Trapped in a Matchbox, I'm Widget, LibisAnna, Dee Hensley, CovenStine, BeckettNYPD, Rigspelt, Castlefan83, Warden 18, Alias..., Tycho77, and MTAM for either your consistent reviews throughout this whole thing or your wonderfully superlative comments (and ego stroking LOL) more recently (or both). I know I probably missed some people, but rest assured that I still appreciate everyone who reads it. A lot! Thank you!**_

_**And MTAM...squee away. ;-)**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or superheroes mentioned henceforth, except for Joelle and Dave.**_

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Rick and Kate arranged to meet Joelle and Dave at a little out-of-the-way restaurant, at an early hour to avoid the crowds and the potential of more gawkers. Kate insisted they leave the house a little early so they could stop at a store and she could get a new toothbrush. Rick, of course, was put out that she didn't want to share and didn't mind letting her know.

"Really, Kate. It was just a toothbrush."

"Then you shouldn't mind if I stop to get a new one."

"Kate, do I need to point out to you that we've kissed already? Sucked face? Swapped spit? Snogged? Played tonsil hockey? Tongue tag?"

She looked at him for a pregnant moment, her eyes narrowed into a perfect Beckett glare. "Might I just say...ewwww."

"You didn't seem to be complaining at the time. Any of the times."

"I might have if you'd used any of those terms before now. Really, Rick," she chastised. She tried a different tactic, one that usually worked with him. "What would Alexis say if she heard you now?"

"She just might be able to provide us with a few more terms, although I must say that the thought is actually kind of frightening and I don't think I'd like it one bit."

"No, I could see where you wouldn't like that." She pointed her finger at him. "Kissing is different." And hot, when it's with you, she added to herself silently. "But don't try to use my toothbrush again. Because as much as I love you or love kissing you, the thought of sharing tooth bacteria or microscopic food particles just does not do it for me." And since they'd arrived at the store, she hopped out and ran inside.

He wanted to still be upset, but he just sat there grinning like an idiot, all because she'd said that she loved him. He didn't get tired of hearing it. He didn't think he'd ever get tired of hearing it. And she'd said it so off-handedly, so suddenly, at such a non-romantic moment-talking about tooth goo, after all-that somehow it was even more special because of that. What a woman.

When she came back, he still felt like grinning like an idiot but instead put on a little pout just because he felt like he had to pout a little bit to save face. He would never live it down if she knew he melted because she said she loved him. And she would definitely use it to her advantage later. When she got back in the care, she just reiterated that there are some lines you don't cross and sharing a toothbrush was one of them. Then she threw a bag at him and it landed with a clunk in his lap. "Here. I got you something so you don't feel so rejected. And to encourage you to respect some personal boundaries."

Puzzled, but excited, he opened up the bag and let out an exclamation of "Cool!" when he found inside a kid's Spiderman toothbrush and some Spidey toothpaste. "And it's even battery operated! Kinky."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm sure the manufacturers had that in mind when they made a _children's_ tooth brush, Rick."

"You never know. They probably did. The best marketing strategies involve products that can be used in a way other than their intended purpose, or those that appeal to more than just one specific segment of the population. Remember that list years ago about all of the other things that a certain carbonated diet beverage could be used for? I mean, come on...a meat tenderizer?"

"I suppose you tried it."

"Of course! Me and probably thousands of other people! I bet they had a real spike in sales after that list was released. I tell you, it's the smartest strategy: cross-market things, broaden the appeal. And do you know the number of adults who went to see the Spiderman movies?"

"I'm sure you'd tell me, Donald Trump," she said dryly.

About ready to back out of the parking space, Rick shifted the car back into park and turned toward her. "Oh. My. God. You've never seen Spiderman, have you?" he asked with an incredulous look on his face.

She rolled her eyes again. "Geez, Castle, you make it sound like I've never kissed a guy or something. It's _Spiderman_. It's a kid's comic book character that some overzealous movie producer decided to make into a movie to bilk more money out of kids' parents. I'm not a kid, and while I can appreciate the art of the genre, I don't really make it a habit to read comic books. Therefore I never saw the need to see a kid's movie based on a comic book character."

"It's a classic!" he told her, in some state of outrage, as if she'd just said that Frank Sinatra was a bad singer. "And it's not just for kids."

"While I'd love to continue this conversation, we do have dinner plans. With other people who will be kept waiting if we don't leave now. Drive, Rick."

Shaking his head at her, he turned away from her and began to drive to the restaurant.

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They found Joelle and Dave outside in the entrance to the restaurant, sitting on a bench in the shade, Joelle just looking around and Dave doing something on his phone. Joelle stood up as Kate and Rick approached the restaurant, giving them little greeting hugs, and then stepped back to swat Dave, who was still obliviously playing his game, on the shoulder. "Put that away. Kate and Rick are here."

He looked up sheepishly and smiled at them. "Oh, sorry. Hi."

"What were you playing?" Rick wanted to know.

Dave named the game and Rick nodded his head. "Yeah, that's a good one. But I'm waiting for the next version to come out. That's supposed to have some really good new levels and traps."

Dave gave him a cocky smile and nodded his head a little bit. "It does."

Rick's jaw dropped as he realized Dave's meaning, that he had just been playing the unreleased version of the game. "Noooo...you don't..."

"Yeah," Dave confirmed, "I do."

"But that one won't be released for another couple of weeks!"

"I know a guy who knows a guy. Let's just say I'm a really good beta tester."

"I almost hate to ask, but can I try it?" Rick asked in a pleading type of voice. Dave simply handed him his phone, and Rick grabbed it from him and said gleefully, "Man, this is so cool!" as he started to play the game.

Joelle and Kate were observing the exchange silently, and now watched as Rick played the game and Dave watched over his shoulder, basically alerting him to new features or just making various sound effects with Rick. Kate looked over at Joelle and asked, "Should we go inside and have a drink while they bond over exploding asteroids or whatever they are?"

"Sure. Let's see how long it takes for them to notice that we've left."

The two ladies went inside and ordered drinks at the bar. After they were served, Joelle asked how the Punking Plan was going. "Your friend is Lanie, right?"

"Uh huh. And it's kind of started to include the two other detectives I work with, Ryan and Esposito. Really, we can't just punk Lanie without including them too."

Kate filled her in on the text messages to and from Lanie, and about the 'going to bed' comment, although she kept the details G rated. She also told Joelle about the phone call to Ryan, and about how her mystery man is hypothetically now named 'Dave'.

Joelle was laughing as she sat back and sipped her drink. "Oh, my gosh, how did you manage to keep a straight face for that? I know it's a phone call and they can't see you, but even if I'm smiling, you can hear it."

"I guess I must do a little more acting with my job that I realized. And I know how to read Kevin...Ryan, that is. Kevin is his first name. But it went even better than I ever thought it would. He just played right into it." She took a sip of her drink. "So anyway, the reason I called Ryan in the first place...when Rick called you earlier, he said you don't have any plans for the next few days?"

"No, nothing definite. We just have some things that we have on our list to do sometime, like biking, going to the nature preserve...stuff like that. Why?"

"Well, I think Rick arranged something. Not sure what...it could be anything, knowing him. But since I called Ryan about something to do with 'Dave', I pretty much have to keep up the ruse and do something with 'Dave' now. And you too, of course. Then the boys can go play and the moms can sit and talk," she joked. "Sound okay?"

"Sure. We're pretty game for anything."

"So," Kate pointed to the drink, "how many of these do you think we'll have before the guys figure out that we're gone?"

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"No, get that one over there first...it's worth more that way," Dave told Rick, pointing to the corner of the phone screen.

"Ooo...got it. Kate, you should try this," Rick said, without really looking for her. When she didn't answer, he said, "Kate, look at this!". But she still gave no response, not even to twist his ear. And he realized that he couldn't smell her around him anymore. And on that thought, he looked up to find that Dave was the only one standing next to him. Well, Dave and some elderly couple that were shuffling into the restaurant.

"Uh oh," Rick said, nudging Dave.

When Dave looked up and saw that the ladies were gone, he looked back at Rick and said, "Oh, shit."

"Let's hope they went inside," Rick told him, handing Dave's phone back to him and heading into the restaurant.

They heard laughter coming from the bar area, so they headed right and found Kate making circular motions with her fingers and then slapping her hand on the bar, which was followed by Joelle saying "No!" loudly, followed by Kate's "Yes!" and then both throwing back their heads in laughter. Something was niggling at the back of Rick's mind, and as he saw her little pantomime, he got a bad feeling.

"Anything you'd like to share, ladies?" Rick said as he walked up to them. Amidst their laughter, they turned and noticed the guys.

"I just was hearing how you have an amazing front flip. Over obstacles, no less," Joelle told Rick as Kate sat, trying to hide her grin.

"You didn't..." Rick said to Kate, realizing that she had told Joelle the story of how he front flipped over the couch after she hurt her foot.

"Uh huh," Kate told Rick, using her full-watt smile on him, leaving no doubt in his mind.

He leaned in close to her, invading her personal space as he did so well. "You're ruining my dashing image, you know."

"You did that all by yourself," she whispered to him, "but don't worry, I love you anyway."

And the embarrassment was replaced with a goofy smile as he melted again for the second time in an hour. He put his arm around her and pulled her close to his side as they turned to rejoin the conversation with the other couple.

"So you boys finally figured out that we were gone?" Joelle remarked, addressing her husband.

"Yeah, well..." Dave replied.

"Hey, we were saving the universe from demonic asteroids!" Rick explained.

"And they glow!" Dave added earnestly, as if that explained everything. Rick just nodded.

Kate and Joelle looked at each other and rolled their eyes simultaneously.

"There they go again," Rick commented back to Dave, referring to the first time that had happened. "It's still freaky."

Kate just grabbed her drink off the bar and stepped forward, urging Rick forward too. "Come on. They said they could seat us whenever you two yahoos decided to join us."

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They dined on a tasty seafood dinner, and the conversation was a lively mix of banter and getting to know each other. Joelle had already told Kate that she was a trauma nurse, and they found out that Dave was, by training, an engineer who still did consulting when he wanted, but for his 'real' job, he authored a satirical cartoon that ran in several newspaper markets. Right away upon revealing what he did, he assured Rick and Kate that they didn't have to worry; his satire wasn't anything that was aimed directly at a particular person or even a group, so they never had to worry about finding themselves as the subject matter for his column of the day; it was more to do with general signs of the times, like rising gas prices. His brush with notoriety came when someone read more into one of his drawings than what was there, and he attempted to set the record straight, which blew the whole thing out of proportion and turned their lives upside down for a while. "The only good thing, I guess, is that the publicity made the series get picked up in several more markets. I just wish that could have happened without the upheaval to our lives."

"Amen to that," Joelle agreed. "I'm still amazed that such a little thing snowballed into something so huge."

"The two professions are pretty different. How did you happen to do both?" Rick asked.

"Just a matter of opportunities that I was lucky enough to find and take advantage of. I kept up the graphic arts gig through college, but still got the other degree; you know, like college athletes who try to go pro, so they have something to fall back on if the pro thing doesn't work out. Even did the suit and tie thing for quite a few years before the newspaper thing happened, but when it did, I ran with it. Now I only wear suits a couple of times a month. I can sit around and work in my underwear if I want to now."

"And believe me, he does," Joelle laughed.

"So have you ever done a comic strip or anything like that? With a recurring character, like Spiderman?" Rick asked, giving Kate a little wink, which made her roll her eyes.

"I dabbled when I was in high school, but I never had anything like Spidey. Spidey is cool. Spidey is classic," Dave replied, with a definite sense of awe in his voice.

"I just found out something about Kate that rocked me to my core," Rick said in a conspiratorial tone as he leaned in toward the other couple. Kate, knowing where he was going with this, just sat back in her chair and rolled her eyes yet again as he dropped his bombshell in a tone befitting him revealing that she was a serial killer.

"She has never seen the Spiderman movie."

Dave looked appropriately shocked. "Seriously?"

Kate looked at Joelle for some help. "Sorry no help here. Dave dragged me to see it when it came out. And then we had to buy it when it came out on DVD. In all fairness, it was pretty entertaining, especially when he was learning how to be Spiderman."

Rick snapped his fingers. "Hey, what are you guys doing after this? I bet we could find a movie rental place and then we could all go back to the house and introduce Kate to the wonders of Spiderman."

Dave and Joelle looked at each other and shrugged. Dave said "I haven't seen it in a while. It could be fun to see it again."

Joelle addressed Kate, to give her an out if she wanted one. "Really, if you don't want to, that's perfectly fine."

Kate thought about it, and then smiled at the others. "Okay, Okay...twist my arm. Rick already had me watching the Game Show Network one night, so Spiderman might be a nice change from that. It could be fun. But," she said in a stage whisper, "we do need some chocolate."

"And popcorn," Rick suggested.

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The dinner bill was paid, (by Rick, of course, after some amount of argument by the other couple that they didn't want Rick to think they were only there to sponge off of him), the movie was rented, popcorn was bought and directions to the house were given. Kate and Rick heard a car drive up a short time after they got back to the house, and walked outside to find Dave doing his best not to gawk at the house, even though she could tell he was impressed. Joelle, however, had no pretenses, and stood there with her mouth hanging wide open as she looked around at the house.

"He kidnapped you and brought you _here_?" she asked Kate.

"Uh, yeah. My first reaction was pretty much like you are now," Kate told her. "Let's go inside and we can give you the nickel tour."

After showing them around the first floor, complete with a look at the pool and a further invitation to come over for a swim, Kate told them to get comfortable in the living room as Rick started throwing fruit into the margarita maker to make some fruity concoctions before they started the movie. Rick brought up the topic of the future excursion that they had been talking about as part of the Lanie/Esposito/Ryan punking plan.

"I checked my email when we got back here and my contact set up something for the day after tomorrow. Deep sea fishing sound okay? Are you both still free then? Dave, are you the type of guy who would like your imaginary girlfriend to arrange a deep sea fishing expedition as a surprise for you?"

"Sounds good to me. Can we bring some beer to take along? I think a beer on a hot Florida fishing trip would be just the thing," Dave answered, taking one of the margaritas that Rick had just finished pouring.

"Don't worry about it. I've got it covered. Imported or domestic?" Rick inquired.

"Either way, just ice cold."

"What should we bring?" Joelle chimed in.

"Beachwear, maybe an extra set of clothes? And probably a camera."

"Got it."

They grabbed their drinks, the popcorn and the chocolate and walked over to the couch. "Is that thing as comfortable as it looks?" Joelle asked.

"Probably more," Kate told her.

She and Dave sat down and Joelle let out a sigh of contented comfort. "Oh, my gosh, how do you not end up falling asleep here?"

Kate looked a little embarrassed. "Yeah. Well. We haven't quite figured that out yet. Just don't eat a lot of ice cream and then lay down there, because you won't be getting up anytime soon."

Joelle looked at the couch and deliberately picked the side without the chaise lounge. "If he," she hooked her thumb toward Dave, "gets anywhere close to a horizontal position and puts his feet up, he'll be snoring inside of five minutes."

"Not with the right company, I wouldn't be," he countered, giving his wife a smile combined with a lustful look.

"And definitely not _here_ you won't be! We stay on this side of the couch, buster." She swatted his arm.

Joelle pulled Dave down beside her in that side of the couch, and Rick took his usual spot in the corner of the chaise lounge side. Kate made sure everyone had their drinks and each couple had a bowl of popcorn, and then she settled against Rick, with his arm around her. Rick waited until they were fully seated before he did anything with the TV; Kate had noticed him making sure that it was hidden in the wall while they were waiting for their guests to arrive, so she knew he wanted to show it off. "Everyone ready for the movie?" he asked.

Joelle looked around again, and then asked the question he was waiting for. "Sure, but where's the TV?"

Rick flashed her a grin and said "I love this part." He pushed the buttons on the remote that had the painting pushing out from the wall and flipping over to reveal the TV.

Dave's eyebrows went up and he looked at it with appreciation. "Now THAT is one cool gadget!"

Rick handed Dave the remote. "Wanna play?"

Dave took it and said "Hell, yeah!" while the women just watched them, amused. Finally, after deciding that three complete cycles of disappearing and reappearing television entertainment was enough, they began the movie.

Kate was pleasantly surprised by the movie. It wasn't nearly as hokey as she imagined it would be. She smiled when Peter didn't need his glasses anymore and was walking around town to the happy song, she laughed when he was discovering his new powers and had the cafeteria incident and during the subsequent tests on the rooftops, and she snuggled a little big closer to Rick during the death scene with Uncle Ben. As soon as he remembered that the death scene was coming, he tightened his arm around her just a bit and reached over to press a kiss to the side of her head. She didn't know what that was for at first, but when she realized that he was looking out for her, she was touched.

And at the end of the movie when the Green Goblin met his demise, she couldn't help but comment that that would one heck of a crime scene, which got her a surprised but amused look from Dave, to which she just replied "Sorry, occupational hazard."

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After Joelle and Dave left, amidst many thank yous and promises to meet on Wednesday morning, Rick ran upstairs. After putting the margarita glasses in the dishwasher and turning out the lights, she went into their bedroom to hear Rick humming the Spiderman theme song from the bathroom.

"Rick?"

He stuck his head out of the bathroom, a smile on his face with toothpast foam around his lips, holding the still-vibrating Spidey toothbrush. "Dis sing is coo-oh," he said through the toothpaste foam in his mouth. "Tanksh!"

"You're welcome. Now go spit, please?"

She followed him into the bathroom to brush her own teeth-with her new toothbrush. As she was rinsing out the sink, she felt some arms encircle her from behind and felt a chin resting on her shoulder. "Aren't we domestic? Brushing our teeth together before bed. Just like-" he cut himself off abruptly, feeling lucky that he'd been able to stop his train of thought before it escaped his mouth: _just like an old married couple_.

"Just like what?"

"Like a couple that's been together for a lot longer than a couple of days. It seems like longer, you know." _Good save, Ricky boy_, he thought.

"It has been longer."

"Well, not with us as a true couple."

"Sort of, but we've talked about this. We've had a lot of the other 'relationship' aspects for a while, but just never fully realized it. Now we do." She turned around in his arms. "And from here on out we just make a point to take advantage of that."

"Can I take advantage of you now?" he asked, the corners of his mouth turning up in a teasing smile.

"It's not taking advantage of me if I'm a willing participant," she countered, raising her lips to his as she wound her arms around his neck.

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Later, they lay entwined with each other and with the sheets, her head resting on her forearms on top of his chest as she gazed at him. They'd been talking about random things, neither of them quite wanting to succumb to sleep yet. They discussed the things they had to do yet before they left, and of course they threw around some ideas for the next steps in their plans to fool Lanie and the guys. When there was a lull in the conversation, she just gazed at his face, not quite able to read the expression that she saw there. He reached up, slowly, tenderly, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I love you." He said it simply, but the tone held as much emotion as what was meant by the words themselves. She'd heard the words before, and it still thrilled her to hear them now, giving her that sweet little punch in her belly, but she heard something extra this time, and she wasn't sure what it was.

But then, as if sensing that she needed a levity break and charming her as only he could do, he added, "And I'm not just saying that because you bought me the coolest toothbrush ever."

She laughed lightly, the needed levity achieved. "I know. But it's a nice perk. And I love you too." And she leaned up to give him a light kiss before snuggling into his shoulder and feeling his arms come around her to hold close to him in the night.

_**

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I hope this chapter wasn't too boring for everyone. I needed to bring Joelle and Dave back, but we have some time to get through before we can move onto the next phase of the plan with Lanie and the guys. I do have a good plot development planned (at least I think it's good), but alas, we're not quite ready for that one either. So even if you were bored out of your mind, please just stick with it for a few more chapters.

_**Thanks very much to 'thecompany', who supplied me with the verbiage for 'punking' Lanie and the boys. I don't know why that term escaped me, but it's perfect! **_

_**And to digress and rave a bit more about 'Nikki Heat', I'm thinking that my favorite line from the whole episode was "I need to go. Over there." It was just delivered so beautifully...she played it in such a wonderfully flustered and bewildered manner, like she just had to escape. And there was a nice little implication of 'don't you dare follow me.' Of course, out of context, it doesn't mean much, but the whole context of that scene was great.**_

_**ETA: I saw that while I was writing this chapter, it hit the 100 mark for people that have added it to their favorites list! Amazing, and thanks again!**_

_**And reviews are still very much appreciated!**_


	33. Chapter 33

_**Wow! I can't say enough about how great you all are! Just when I think I've started writing total yuk, you all come back and you're just so nice! Thank you! A couple more shout outs to Rozablood, goeaglesgo and Space-Case for their awesome comments. **_

_**After chapter 32, I hit the 200 mark for people who have subscribed to this story for story alerts. TWO HUNDRED? OMG! Funny to think that when I started this, I didn't even think I would finish writing their entire vacation, or even necessarily get them fully together. I guess 'The Plan' didn't really have a plan...kind of ironic.**_

_**The standard disclaimers apply.**_

_**Enjoy!**_

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Her first thought as she woke up was that she was either somehow laying out in the hot sun, or that she had a full-body heating pad strapped to the entire back of her body. Against the dry coolness of the house, the heat felt wonderful, and it made her unconsciously burrow her body back toward the source. It was at that point she became aware of what the heat source really was.

Rick.

Even without the glimmers of the early morning light as it began to filter through the windows, she could tell that they were laying on their sides and he had his arm around her belly, once again anchoring her body to his, as he had a couple of nights ago when they fell asleep. It surprised her how tightly he held her, even in his sleep. He had one of his legs thrown lazily over hers, and his face was buried in her neck.

It felt _so_ good.

Now that she was awake, she felt a light tickle of Rick's breath in her hair as he exhaled during his sleep. Like she did on that first morning that they awoke together on the couch, she stayed still and just enjoyed the feeling. Back then, of course, it was an entirely new experience. Now, eight days later, they had many more of these experiences between them, and a lot of those much more intimate than that first time. But she still wasn't 'used to it' where she found it boring, or she felt smothered, or trapped. The only feeling she had was the one that said that she'd stay exactly as she was for as long as she could stay there. She had no desire to move out of the bed, or out of his embrace. And she'd never thought of herself as being particularly romantic or sappy, but she wished she could just bottle this feeling.

Richard Castle. She was in bed with Richard Castle. And she wasn't drug induced, comatose, kidnapped (well, not anymore, anyway), blackmailed, coerced, imprisoned, detained, punished, or threatened. And she wanted to stay here! In a way, the whole thing was so absurd that she almost laughed right there. Well, absurd according to her life and mindset before she came down here with him. Since she came down here, that mindset had changed dramatically, for the better. And if she'd realized how much better things could be this way, she would have done it ages ago.

And he loved her. She knew that. She knew that without a doubt. It was all obvious, so obvious to her now. It was obvious in the way he looked at her, when he smiled at her, when he held her close. How he turned his body toward her in his sleep and held her, as he was doing now. All of a sudden, she realized that if she had uttered three little words-_'take me back'_-when they'd been on the plane, she wouldn't be feeling any of this now. She wouldn't know how he felt, she wouldn't have realized how _she_ felt. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach as she imagined the implications of that. She could have so easily missed all of this! Thinking about how lucky she was, she realized that not saying those other three words had set the events in motion that eventually allowed her to utter those other three, much more important words to Rick: '_I love you'_.

Laying there, she realized she was happy. Really and truly happy, and content. She almost felt like laughing. She thought she must have some crazy mix of endorphins running through her veins right now because this feeling was absolutely sublime. Smile on her face, she snuggled back against Rick just a little and wrapped her arm more tightly over the one of his that encircled her.

After several minutes of just listening to him breathe, she felt his head move against hers as his leg moved just a little. Then as he woke, his hand that was around her moved up to cover her naked breast. She chuckled softly and rolled toward him just a little bit so she could turn her head and see him.

"Subtle you are not, Mr. Castle."

"I told you once that my hands sometimes do things by themselves when I'm sleeping. I have no control over them."

"You're awake now and your hand hasn't moved."

"Well maybe I decided if that's where it wanted to be, then I would just let it stay there."

"Really." She leaned over to softly kiss his lips.

"Uh huh. Good morning to you." After he kissed her, he leaned his face into her neck and just laid there with her. After a minute or two, he asked, "Sleep well?"

"Very. When I first woke up, I thought someone had put a heating pad against my back. Then I figured out it was you. You give off an incredible amount of warmth."

"Hey, I'm just a warm, loving guy."

"Mmm hmm."

And then, to her surprise, he took his hand off her breast and wound his arm around her, and just held her to him, and nuzzled her neck a little more. When he still didn't try any blatant romantic overtures even after another few minutes went by, she smiled and said, "Why, Mr. Castle, I had no idea you were a cuddler."

"I realized that there's a certain tranquility to just laying with you and holding you. I like the other stuff too, but this is...immensely satisfying in its own way."

By way of agreeing with him, she put her hands over the arm he had stretched across her while burrowing a little closer to him. And within their little cocoon, they gave into sleep once again.

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When Rick awoke the second time that morning, the very first thing he felt was an incredible urgency. After the few seconds it took him to wake enough to process his surroundings, he realized that the urgency that he felt was of a sexual nature, and he became aware of not only Kate's head nuzzling his neck and teasingly biting his earlobe, but also her hand as she stroked him into a maddeningly aroused state. Turning his head, he brought his hand to her face and uttered "God, Kate..." before claiming her lips with his. He felt like he would explode any minute, so he frantically pulled her hand away from him, and she let him remove it, knowing how close he was by the little bit of moisture she could already feel on the tip of his shaft. After he released her hand, she brought it up to splay her fingers on the back of his neck.

They continued kissing leisurely, and she rolled over toward him as they kissed, with his arms going around her to pull her closer. But the kisses grew more intense when, rolling her onto her back again, he took his free hand and lightly trailed it down her body until he could slip a finger inside of her and stroke her sweet spot. She responded by using the hand at the back of his neck to tangle in his hair and pull him down to nuzzle her breasts as she let out a moan of pure pleasure. He needed no encouragement to mercilessly tease her nipples with his tongue, just as she had been teasing him minutes ago with her hand. She didn't last long with him doing that; she reached around him and pulled him fully onto her, forcing him to remove his hand from touching her intimately. She reached up and grasped his head again, pulling his lips down to her hers, urging his body over hers.

He accepted the welcome invitation to move over her, as she spread her legs to accommodate him. He had moved his kisses to her neck briefly, but then rose up and, stroking the side of her cheek softly with his hand, looked her deep in her eyes as he declared huskily "I love you" at the same time that he slowly penetrated her femininity.

They gazed at each other as they began to move together. After they joined as one, he placed his arms under her and rolled them in the bed, bringing her on top of him. She assumed the pace, and cupped his face with her hands as she rode him with abandon. She raised up, allowing him access to her breasts for a short time, but then she leaned down again, skin to skin, body to body, but keeping the same frantic pace. She loved the feel of their naked bodies pressed together, moving together toward the same goal. She laid on him and raked her nails down his sides to enhance the sensations. Their eyes locked on each other.

He grabbed her hips and began to pump them on him. She felt so good, and really, good didn't begin to cover it. At this moment, she was the epitome of all that was right and wonderful. She was all that there was, and she was his. Only his. And the thought of that was powerful, and enough to send him over the edge. And his breathy pants and exclamations, along with that look in his eyes, were enough to drive her to the brink, right along with him. And they flew, together, before she collapsed on his chest, her breathlessness matching his own..

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Fifteen minutes later, she was still sprawled on his chest in just about the same position, although she had let her legs straighten out so she was stretched along the entire length of his body. She had tried to roll of of him after a minute or two, so he didn't have to take her full weight, but he just tightened his arms around her and murmured "No...stay."

So she stayed where she was, laying her head on his shoulder and hugging his head with her opposite arm. She felt his breathing even out and his arms relax, and thought he was sleeping, so she tried to ease off of him again. And still, he tightened his arms around her again. And he didn't let her go. "No," he said sleepily, "I want you to stay. Right here. Exactly like this. Let me live out my fantasy."

"This can't be comfortable for you. Anyway, I thought the way I woke you up would have been the fantasy, not a bit of postcoital cuddling," she joked to him softly.

"It's fine. And believe me, that was one of my fantasies too," he told her, the utter contentment in his tone obvious. "But this is just another fantasy of mine...you, right here, with me. I can't think of another place in the world that I'd want to be right now."

He began softly drawing lazy designs on her back with his fingers. When he got close to her sides, she shivered at the tickling feeling it produced, letting out a soft laugh. "So what about later this morning?" she asked him. "Or this afternoon? Where do you want to be then?"

"Eh, somewhere. Unless you'd like to stay here all day?"

"Tempting. But I do think we need to get out from time to time. Yesterday we didn't even make it out of the house until the afternoon. Do you know how off my sleep schedule is going to be when we get back home?"

"We could just make it a point to go somewhere private and take a nap over our lunch hours," he suggested, trying to sound helpful.

"Oh, sure. I'm positive that if we go somewhere private, _we_ would do nothing but take a nap. Sleep. Uh huh."

"Exactly." He grinned down at her. "But since you're talking about that thing called sleep, I'm realizing that maybe I need a little more. Will you stay with me?"

She raised up to look at him, a surprised look on her face. "No, Rick, I think I'm going to go down to the beach to scout up some early morning hunky male meat." She was ready to roll her eyes at him until she saw the brief flash in his eyes at her words. "Duh, Rick. _Of course_ I'll stay with you. Don't even ask a question like that. Because," she heard the hitch in her voice as she told him softly, "there's no place I'd rather be either. Right here with you, exactly like this," she told him, echoing his words. She hugged his head to her and touched her lips to his. "Exactly like this." She laid her head back down on his shoulder, and drifted back to sleep, content as she felt his arms encircle her again.

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While writing this chapter, I received the horrible news that a coworker of mine, a wonderful person who touched many lives, was killed in a tragic car crash. I've been reeling from the news for the last day or so. So I decided to end this chapter a bit earlier than I originally intended, and to just let it be nothing but pure fluff, because at a time like this, fluff is a good diversion, and it's happy. Hopefully I'll get more done soon; the next week will be tough and I may need the nice diversion of writing this story.

_**As always, reviews are greatly appreciated.**_


	34. Chapter 34

_**I can't tell you how much I appreciate the outpouring of support you all have shown me. Honestly, it's been a tough week. I work with kids, and my coworker had been doing this for over 30 years. The memorial service was last night, and it was standing room only. Someone said there were over 600 people there. It was amazing and it just cements that this is a huge loss, and shows how many lives she has touched over the years, in fact, several generations of people. **_

_**Doing this story has been a nice escape. I didn't get to work on it very much, but what I did was nice.**_

_**Disclaimer: still don't own anybody.**_

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After awakening a short while later right where she fell asleep, smack dab on top of Rick's chest, she once again realized how content she felt. If there was a better way to wake up, she didn't know what it was.

Then she realized that laying on top of the human furnace of Rick had made her feel quite toasty and content, but she could also feel the slipperyness of their skin from the perspiration where they were plastered together. Easing off of him and somewhat surprised that he didn't wake up, she tiptoed into the bathroom and started the shower. She stepped in and as she let the warm spray wash over her, she wasn't terribly surprised when within the first two minutes, she sensed the shower door open behind her and felt some strong arms encircle her waist. She leaned back into him instinctively. He pulled her hair aside and leaned forward to nuzzle her neck with a kiss.

"How come you didn't wait for me?" he murmured against her neck, his lips creating a delicious little tickle as they vibrated against her skin.

"You looked so peaceful, for one thing. And I also knew that if I woke you up, we'd never make it out of that bed anytime soon," she told him, a contented smile on her face.

"Is that a bad thing?" he asked as his hands started tracing designs on her stomach, one of them dipping lower and lower until it wasn't on her stomach anymore.

"Rick!" she exclaimed, not surprised that he was trying to seduce her in the shower, but surprised because he wasn't wasting any time before he tried. But, as usual, she had no complaints.

"Answer the question...is it a bad thing to stay in bed with me? Or do you prefer the shower?"

"N..n..nnoooo. It's not a...ohhhh...," she moaned as his fingers caressed her very intimately. "Not a bad thing at all. But I am developing a certain affinity for the shower right now."

"So you don't want to go back to bed now?" he asked huskily as he kissed from her neck down to her shoulder, while his fingers kept up their activity further south on her body. His other hand, needing something to do, reached up to her breast, where he rolled and massaged her nipple between his fingertips. She let her head loll back against his shoulder as she closed her eyes.

"No...because here I...think...we can...ohhh...multitask really nicely." The last part of her statement came out as a breathy barrage of words, as if she knew that if she didn't say it quickly, she would soon lose the ability to speak coherently, given what he was doing to her. The more he caressed that small part of her body, feeling how she was responding to him, the more aroused he became. Especially when she reached in back of her and grasped him, and began to lightly pump him with her hand.

"Multitask? So you mean that we take a shower but we do something else too?"

"Mmmm..." she responded, because it was the only sound that she was capable of making right about then.

"So something else like maybe..." He turned her around and backed her up against the wall of the shower, and pressing his body to hers, finished, "...this?"

And when she looped her arms around his neck and murmured a sexy "uh huh", he took the invitation, claiming her lips with his as he boosted her up and claimed her body with his too. And amidst breathy pants, hot kisses and wandering hands, Rick and Kate lost themselves in each other and in their passion as the water beat down around them. And when it was all over, Rick grabbed her tightly and backed away from the wall to sit down on one of the shower seats, Kate still wrapped around him, and he muttered "I'm going to have this shower bronzed."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After finally completing their shower, despite Rick starting to scream like a girl (as Kate put it) when the hot water finally ran out because of their prolonged shower activity, they went downstairs to grab a quick bite to eat before Rick was going to drag her out on a mystery excursion.

"Come on, Rick, the cold water shouldn't bother you! Don't 'real men' find it invigorating?" she teased.

"I think I just proved to you that I'm a 'real man', as you put it, and no, I'm not ashamed to say that if this body is going in water, it had better be over 85 degrees. I mean, geez, Beckett...didn't you ever see the 'shrinkage' episode of Seinfeld? That episode scarred me so badly that I didn't go in any kind of pool for a year. Could you imagine what cold water would have done to my reputation?"

She gazed at him, a puzzled look on her face, and crinkled her brow. "Rick, what ARE you talking about?"

"Please tell me that you've seen Seinfeld."

"Well, yeah, I've seen the show occasionally."

"Okay, you know George?"

"Sure."

"Well, the whole gang goes to a beach house. George goes for a swim and the water is really cold. So he's changing and Jerry's girlfriend walks in on him and starts to laugh. Because certain parts of him had a problem with cold water. Get it?" he asked, drawing out the question. She nodded as she made a silent 'o' with her mouth. "And the whole time, he just keeps protesting and saying no, it was just shrinkage from the cold water. So then the woman told some other women, and they snicker whenever they look at him, and he keeps talking about shrinkage."

She raised one eyebrow at him and stood with her hands on her hips as she addressed him in the no-nonsense Beckett voice. "So Seinfeld made you afraid of cold water."

"Well, not...exactly..." he tried, feeling a tiny bit silly, especially with the way she said it. "Of course I would _drink_ cold water, even ice water. But I don't want it to...come in contact with me...uh, there."

"Uh huh. Okay. Shrinkage, huh?"

"Shrinkage."

"I must say, Rick, I haven't witnessed any episodes of shrinkage with you, not even when I squirted the whipped cream on you, and that was pretty cold. I really don't think you were shrinking." Then she got an evil little gleam in eye that she tried to hide from Rick. "In fact, my _mouth_ didn't think so either," she enunciated very clearly.

Rick looked up at the ceiling and muttered "Beckett!"

"Yes, Rick?" she answered innocently.

"Don't you give me that innocent act," he told her, pointing his finger at her. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. Someday, I'm going to have to teach you a lesson, Ms. Beckett."

"Why whatever for, Mr. Castle?"

"I find that I have very little in the way of self-control around you anymore. I used it all up during our first week down here. And when you say things like that, I seem to have a rather immediate response to you that, if you keep that up now, it will end with us trying to do things on these stools that would probably result in a trip to the emergency room."

She bit her lip and looked down, but then raised just her eyes to him and said seductively, "The couch is just right over there."

"Kate!"

Laughing, she hopped off the stool. "I'll meet you back here in ten minutes." And she headed upstairs to finish getting ready.

Rick watched her go and then raised his eyes to the ceiling, thinking that she just might be the death of him. But, man, what a way to go! And he wouldn't have it any other way.

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Rick had decided they'd been on the islands long enough without having seen much of the natural beauty that the place was known for. The mystery excursion consisted of a couple of rented kayaks, allowing them to paddle around Tarpon Bay to see the wildlife.

Kate's kayaking experience was limited, so the guide, even though they were going to paddle by themselves, was happy to give her a short tutorial. Before long, they pushed off from the shore. Rick took the lead naturally, paddling with an ease that said that he'd done this before, many times. Kate was impressed. She wasn't having nearly the amount of luck moving the small craft as he was.

He stopped paddling and just sat and glided in the water, allowing her to catch up. "When he saw her struggling, he asked her "Summer camp?"

"Huh?" she asked, still concentrating on moving the kayak.

"Did you go to a summer camp as a kid. You know, swimming, arts and crafts, canoeing..."

"Yeah. How did you know? And I don't remember being as pathetic at canoeing as I am at this."

"I could tell you it's my spidey sense, but really, I just figured that you'd canoed before because you're still trying to canoe right now. But it's a kayak, not a canoe, so that won't work. Remember what the guide said? Shallower strokes, just barely grab the surface of the water. See how wet you are already? That's because your strokes are going too deep. You're making the paddle go too vertical as you stroke, and you're dripping water on yourself with every stroke."

She stopped paddling and looked at him. "Did you bring me here just so you could have a reason to talk about shallow strokes versus _deep_ strokes, and being _wet_?"

Rick blinked at her, having, for once, totally missed the innuendo possibilities for what he'd said. Then he smiled his patented half-smile at her and told her "No, that's just an added benefit. But hey, I guess deep strokes _do _make you wet, in more ways than one."

She rolled her eyes at him. "When will I learn to keep my mouth shut?" she muttered to herself. Of course, he heard her comment, and smiled wider at the reference to her mouth and the further innuendo it provided. But the grin on his face was just too cute and disarming for her to stay Tannoyed very long. And it was just more of the same type of banter that they always engaged in, that was almost a cornerstone of their relationship. Although she had to admit, some of the banter was getting quite a bit more R-rated than it used to be.

Taking a deep breath, she stuck her paddle barely in the water and pulled the water behind her. Then she dipped the other side barely in the water and did the same thing. Okay, that wasn't so bad. And she actually seemed to be moving a little better. Huh. She kept going, just barely breaking the surface of the water with the paddle and soon found that she was skimming along the water at a pretty good clip. She looked at Rick, who was just about even with her now, but had to work to catch up after she finally got the hang of it and started cruising.

"Geez, Kate, where's the fire? This is supposed to be a relaxing little paddle through the preserve, not a race to see if you can be the paddle queen of Sanibel."

"Can't keep up, Ricky?" Now that she had the hang of this paddling thing, she felt comfortable enough to give him a few verbal jabs again.

"Don't you worry about that, Detective."

They saw the small sign that indicated the trail, and steered their kayaks toward the entrance. As they started paddling inside the much narrower body of water, they instinctively slowed down so they could just look around and enjoy the beauty. They paddled down the narrow waterway, with mangrove trees lining both sides and providing some shade from the hot sun. The guides had told them to not only look above the water for the birds, but also below the water and at the shoreline for aquatic creatures. It didn't take long before Rick called her name softly. When Kate looked toward him, she saw him pointing toward the shore where part of a mangrove tree met the water. And there, right under the surface, she saw a crab holding onto the tree. "Wow, look at that..." she uttered.

They paddled through the one and a half mile trail and saw many birds flying around, some flying in to stand at the edge of the creek and peck at bird treasures under the surface of the water. The mangrove trees were fascinating to look at, how they tangled and twisted, looking as if their roots didn't want to be underground. "Imagine if you were a kid," Rick surmised, "and you were the size of a small dog. Wouldn't this place be the most wonderful playground? You could make forts, have hiding spaces, even camp out. So many places to run and hide, or things to climb on. It's the most natural jungle gym in the world."

Kate knew she sometimes (well, often) denigrated him because of his exhuberance at all things childish, but listening to him describe it, she couldn't help but agree. It _did_ look fun. And she was realizing that although he might seem outwardly childish about some things, like his pleasure over a gift of a Spiderman toothbrush, it was just his way of taking pleasure from the little things in life. And when you could take pleasure in the little things in life, she was learning that it made life so much more tolerable, and fulfilling, and more fun. It was easy enough to get bogged down with regular life, especially in her job. So when you learned to appreciate the little things, not take them for granted, it did make your life better. During the last week or so, she was beginning to figure out how true that was.

Sitting there with just the sounds of nature around them, she felt her eyes well up. She quickly blinked back the moisture. What was going on with her? Why was she feeling emotional over mangrove trees, of all things? She looked over at Rick, just gazing out over the trees and watching the birds fly around, contentment on his face. As if he felt her gaze on him, he turned toward her, and his face immediately showed alarm as he saw the wetness in her eyes. "Kate, honey, what's wrong?" he asked, his voice low and concerned.

She gave him a sweet smile, noting the use of the endearment with a tickle in her belly, and took a breath. She reached out a hand to him and he grasped it, taking care not to wobble the boats too much. "Nothing. Just realizing how important the little things are." She paused for a moment, and then continued. "Thank you, Rick."

He looked at her, puzzled. "For what?"

"For...everything. For pushing your way into my life, for making me have fun, for making me laugh. For kidnapping me. For not giving up on me." She took a breath. "For loving me."

Now it was his turn to get emotional. Her quiet but heartfelt words just about turned him to mush, yet again. He pulled her hand to his lips and gave it a sweet kiss. "You're welcome." And then, because it seemed so inadequate, he added "You are so welcome."

And they sat holding hands for a while longer, just enjoying the little moment.

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At the end of the chapter, I hope it's not too OOC, but it just kind of flowed and is indicative of how I feel right now. And I hope I conveyed a sentiment that is universal (without getting too sad): enjoy and appreciate the little moments because they are what makes life wonderful.

_**I checked and there's a segment on of the shrinkage episode of Seinfeld out on Youtube, if anyone hasn't seen it. **_

_**Okay, did anyone else make the connection between Castle's suggestion of mac and cheese at the end of 'Poof' and the mac and cheese scene at the beginning of chapter 29? I love it when that happens!**_

_**And about 'Poof'...that ending! Oh, man! Loved it!**_

_**Thanks for reading. Really. I appreciate it. :-)**_


	35. Chapter 35

_**Sorry this chapter took so long...it just kept going on and on. It wouldn't let me stop! Hope you like it!**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone.**_

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They'd finished their kayak tour and had paddled around the shores of the bay for a while after that. At one point, Rick led Kate into some shallow areas with a lot of weeds, and she remarked that she wouldn't want to fall out of the kayak into that. Of course, she should have kept her mouth shut, because Rick took that as an invitation to press his paddle against her kayak to try to tip her over. Somehow-she wasn't quite sure how-she managed to avoid him and splash some water on him in the process. But he just kept trying to overturn her until she brought out the big guns; she told him that she'd throw away the red string bikini if he didn't knock it off right now. He went quiet so fast that she wondered if some bugs with a paralyzing agent had just bitten him.

Later, they turned in their rentals and Rick had told her to wait in the little covered picnic area outside the rental shop while he went inside to finish the paperwork. There were several people there, and when she went over to wait for him, she could see them looking out across the water for something. "Are the fish jumping?" she asked an older 60ish man as she stood near him at the railing.

"No, better! Look out there, about 20 feet to the right of where those lilypads are." The man pointed out toward the water. "It's a manatee! It comes up every minute or two to take a breath and then it goes back under the water. Just keep watching and you'll see it."

Kate looked in the general vicinity of where the man was pointing. Nothing happened right away, and she thought she'd miss it. But then after about a minute, she saw a dark body break the surface of the water before it dove down again. "Oh, wow, I saw it!" she exclaimed.

"I wonder if it's eating," the man said. "It's been there for quite a while."

They stood there and kept watching the area. Right after it surfaced and descended again, Kate felt a hand on her shoulder. She was so engrossed in watching the manatee that her protective survival instincts had her reflexes kicking in, and without missing a beat, she stomped toward the foot that she knew must be behind her while grabbing the hand from her shoulder as she ducked, lightning fast, under the attacker's arm and wrenched it behind his back. At which point she registered her attacker's familiar grunt of surprise and pain, and the all-too-familiar build of his body, a body that, after the last several days, she knew almost as intimately as her own. And she also registered the somewhat fearful gaping look of the older man beside her, who seemed torn as to who he should actually be afraid of: the man who had walked up and scared the lovely woman who had been watching manatees next to him, or the lovely-woman-turned-she-devil-in-the-blink-of-an-eye that had been watching manatees next to him.

She dropped Rick's arm immediately once her brain registered who it was. "Oh, my God, Rick! I'm sorry! I didn't know it was you!" She rubbed the arm that she had wrenched behind his back, while he started hopping on one foot, holding up the other foot that she had stomped on. Then she whacked him lightly on the shoulder. "You doofus! Don't you know better than to surprise me, of all people, without saying anything? You know I run on instinct and ask questions later."

The man next to her was just standing there gaping at them, obviously enlightened that they knew each other, but still unable to tear his gaze away from them. This was a much better show than the boring manatee.

He took a deep breath. "Geez, Kate."

"Are you okay? I _am_ sorry. You may drive me crazy, but I wouldn't try to beat you up like some perp."

"I think I'm okay. Or I will be. Except I may not be able to walk on my foot ever again. How much stomp-down force to you have in that leg anyway?"

"Consider yourself lucky that I had flip flops on and not my spike heels."

Rick winced at the image of spike heels penetrating his upper foot. "Lucky. Lucky. I'm lucky. Got it," he said, still hopping a little bit. He looked at the man who was still eyeing them both suspiciously. Rick decided a little bit of damage control over their strange display might be necessary, and addressing the man, said, "And I'm really lucky to have an awesome woman like her around me. She can really take care of herself, huh?"

Rick's comment made Kate aware of their audience, and while she rolled her eyes at Rick's comment, she turned to the man and said, "Sorry about that. Self-defense classes, you know. They just kick in as instinct after a while." She didn't feel like going into a long litany about being a cop, etcetera, etcetera.

The older man still looked at them, thoroughly unsure of what to say, or even if he should do anything. They obviously knew each other. The male part of the couple, while surprised by the woman reacting as she did, didn't really seem upset with her at all. And the woman, while she'd executed the lightning-fast defense tactic with precision, did let him go as soon as she realized who it was. Although the couple was kind of odd, it didn't appear that they were any sort of danger to each other. At least not physically. They were obviously okay with the outcome, so he just said "That has to be one of the most interesting things that's ever happened to me while watching a manatee."

When Rick heard that they were watching a manatee, his face brightened instantly. "A manatee? Really? Where?" Kate and the older man moved to the railing and pointed to the general location, and the self-defense demonstration was forgotten.

They watched for a while, with the man eventually bidding them a cheerful goodbye, although Kate did catch the odd look he gave them before he walked away. The others who had been watching further down the railing had already left, so they were now alone. She leaned into Rick at the railing and told him, "I think part of him still was wondering what was going on with us...if I was some deranged lunatic who's going to beat you up as soon as he left."

"I think you gave him quite a show. Not what he was expecting. Why did you go into 'cop mode' then anyway?"

"I don't know. I was really absorbed in watching the manatee, and I was feeling kind of mellow after paddling around, so I guess I just went on autopilot."

"I think you've convinced me to be very noisy the next time I walk up behind you. Especially if you're wearing heels." He gave a visible shudder at the thought of her stomping on his foot again.

"What's that?" she asked, motioning toward the rather large bag in Rick's hand.

"Oh! I got you a little present. I saw it earlier when we were paying for the rentals. I just had to get it for you. Well, actually it's two presents. Okay, close your eyes." She rolled them first, but then did as he asked and let her lids flutter down so her eyes were closed. Despite the eyeroll, he could see the corners of her mouth tilt up and he could tell that she was trying not to smile. If he knew her, she would smile more when she saw what was in the bag. He continued, "Hold out your hands." She did and felt something soft and light being placed in them. "Okay, open. Now you have your very own Marvin to take home with you, and he won't even stink."

She opened her eyes to find an adorable little stuffed and furry representation of a conch shell, complete with a little animal with a big pair of wiggly eyes sticking out of the open part of the shell. "Now anytime you want to jump into my arms, you can just grab Marvin and you'll have an excuse," he told her, referring to their first full day in Florida, when she had found the conch and had stumbled into a near-embrace with Rick.

"Do I need an excuse?"

"Never! But I think sometimes you might like to have a reason. He has a certain personality, don't you think?"

"He's cute. In fact, if the original Marvin had been this cute, I don't think I would have been shocked at all. And we wouldn't have ended up like we did."

"Right now, I'm loving ugly molusks and their consequences," he told her with a disarming grin before he leaned down for a kiss.

After the kiss, she looked at the stuffed conch again. "So you mentioned that my surprise was actually two things. Don't tell me you got me a Monica to go with Marvin?"

He smiled. "No, but hey, that's a really good idea! You should have two!" And he started to turn toward the shop again, as if he was going to go buy her another one right then and there.

Laughing, she grabbed his arm. "Not so fast, sugar daddy. I was kidding. One is plenty."

"Really...I think you need another one. So Marvin won't get lonely."

"He won't. Don't worry. You can have a playdate with him so he doesn't get lonely, okay?"

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Kate." She just smiled at him. "Do you want your other present?"

"Of course."

"Close your eyes. And hold out your arms. This next one is a little bigger."

She did as she was told, stepping back half a step and holding her arms out in front of her as she closed her eyes. She soon heard the rustling of the bag and then felt something considerably larger being placed across her arms. She opened her eyes and looked down, and then started laughing as she stared at the huge stuffed alligator laying in her arms.

"Do you like him? I thought he was a lot less scary than the original one. And he's supposed to be kind of a pillow too, so you can keep him around and use him if you need to take a nap sometime."

She turned the stuffed alligator around and hugged him in between her arms. "Oh, he's very huggable. Really squishy. I bet he'd be great to snuggle with in bed."

Just as she predicted, Rick looked put-out. "What about me?" he whined.

"You want to snuggle with him?"

"Only if we can make it a threesome." He waggled his eyebrows at her, but she new what he meant.

"You, me, the alligator...okay. But that's the only threesome I'm interested in."

"Fine by me." Then he got an evil grin on his face like the wheels were turning in that devious, plotting brain of his.

"What?" she asked, still hugging the alligator as she stood in front of him. "You're getting an idea, I can tell. Although with you, I'm not really sure I want to know what the idea is, especially after just talking about a threesome."

"Don't worry. It was more like a 'what if' scenario that popped into my brain. You know how you're talking about things that we do like you do them with Dave, for Lanie and the guys?"

"Yeah..." she uttered, and then as she jumped onto the same thought wavelength as he was on, her eyes got big and she threw a hand over her mouth as she started laughing. "God, Rick, if I mention anything about a threesome to Lanie, it would probably give her heart palpitations and then our little ruse would be an epic fail because she'd never believe it once she really thought about it."

"Oh, believe me, I know. That would be too much, even for Lanie. But it's fun to think about what her initial reaction would be, isn't it?"

Kate stifled another laugh. "She would flip."

He casually draped an arm around her shoulders. "So are you and our new menagerie ready to leave?"

"Sure. Back to the house?"

"Not quite yet. One more quick stop."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick had, of course, wanted to stop for some form of ice cream, and Kate relented with malts to go. Rick had ordered hers, and as soon as he came back to the car with a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin, she knew she shouldn't have let him order by himself.

"It's not chocolate, is it?"

"Well, it's chocolate, but just not all chocolate."

Of course he'd have to try something different. For all she knew, it could be pickle-flavored. Or chocolate and pickle flavored. And at that thought, she had to suppress a shudder. That would be nasty. But then tentatively, she'd taken a taste and found, much to her delight, that it was a mocha-cappucino flavored malt. She sneaked a sideways glance at him, of course finding that he was studying her reaction. "So far, so good," she told him. "At least it's not pickle flavored."

"Pickle flavored? Really, Kate?"

"Castle, I never know what you're going to come up with. I have to be mentally prepared for all situations. Even malts."

He looked thoughtful. "A pickle flavored malt _could_ be interesting..."

"See what I mean? And don't even think about it. Not one more minute little inkling of a thought in that direction. Got it?"

He grinned at her. "Gonna threaten me with throwing out the red string bikini again?"

"You can bet on it."

"Fine. Never again will I use the word 'pickle' as a descriptive term for the word 'malt'. Scout's honor."

"Even though you've never been a boy scout."

"Remember, the honor is universal."

"Yes, how could I forget?" she remarked with an eyeroll.

As they drove back to the house, Kate remarked, "You know, this is really pretty good."

"Glad you like it. I had a feeling you might, given the fact that I'm the supplier of your coffee fix at the station each morning. See, you really have to have a little faith in me," he reminded her in a jokingly chastising tone.

She took another sip of the malt. It had enough chocolate in it to make it sweet, but the hint of the cappucino really made it different. Different, but good. Kind of like Rick himself. She smiled at the thought. It was look not missed by Rick.

"What are you smiling at?" he asked.

"Nothing," she deflected. "Just enjoying the treat. Thanks." She reached over and put her hand on his, and he drove one-handed the rest of the way back to the house.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate was out on the deck enjoying the sunset hours later when she heard her name spoken softly, followed by a hand sneaking around her waist and another hand offering her a glass of wine. After what had happened earlier, he made sure to announce himself a little bit so they didn't have a repeat performance. Feeling his arm around her, she leaned back into him and tucked her head into his neck as the arm around her drew her closer. "Oh, you're warm!" she told him. "It's getting almost cold out here. The temp seems like it's dropped quite a bit since I've been out here." She took a sip of the wine.

He gestured off in the distance. "There's a storm coming in. I checked the weather reports. It may get pretty nasty tonight, but tomorrow is supposed to be bright and warm and sunny for our fishing expedition. I gave Dave a call and they're going to meet us here at about 10:00 and then they'll follow us over to the boat."

"Sounds like you have everything planned. So tonight we can just relax, have some wine and enjoy a good storm?"

"You like storms?"

"Sure. It's an awesome thing to watch nature get mad at the earth for a little bit. I mean, I don't like the truly awful catastrophes, like earthquakes or floods or anything where people die, but a good storm with lightning and downpours? Great! Especially when you can just stay snuggled inside a dry house."

His arm that was around her was lightly caressing her skin and it felt wonderful, especially in contrast to the heat of his body at her back. "So, you're saying that some snuggling is on the agenda for tonight?" He bent down and kissed her neck

"Of course. I can't wait to snuggle with my new alligator friend." Facing away from him as she was, she looked out over the water and allowed herself a smile at how she was baiting him.

"Kate!"

"Yes, Rick?" she asked innocently.

He bent forward and saw the small smile on the corners of her mouth. "You're a tease. And I'll have you know that while _you_ may be able to snuggle with the alligator, the _alligator_ can't snuggle with _you_. _I_ am the only one who can snuggle with _you_. So are you going to let me in on this little snuggle-fest?"

"I think we could arrange that." She took another sip of her wine. "But to be allowed into the inner circle, I think I need something first."

"Name it." He said the words against her neck again, making her shiver.

"I think I could use a neck rub. My shoulder muscles are a little tight because I haven't been to the gym lately, and with the paddling today..." she trailed off. "But I'm also a little chilly, so I'm thinking that the hot tub might be nice for both issues. What do you think? Or will the storm blow in too soon?"

He wrapped his arms more tightly around her for a moment and pressed a kiss to her jawline. "Not a problem, either way. Let me show you something," he said and led her back toward the house, where the hot tub sat close to the back of the house. He opened a little door which housed some kind of a control panel. After he pressed a few buttons, she watched as a canopy slid quietly out of the roof, fully extending to cover the hot tub area.

"And I thought the TV was cool."

"Nice, huh? So if you like storms, there's no better place to watch it than here. In the nice, warm, relaxing water."

"What about if it gets windy? Will the canopy get damaged? Maybe we shouldn't use it in the middle of a storm."

"It's pretty sturdy."

The decision made, she tipped up her glass to take another drink before handing it to Rick and starting to walk in the house. "Where are you going?"

"In the house to get changed. The hot tub awaits. Can you pour me some more wine?"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After changing into her basic black swimsuit-as basic as she had down here anyway-and wrapping a thick terrycloth robe around herself, Kate came back downstairs and made her way out to the hot tub. There still wasn't any rain, but it seemed to be a bit more windy. She was surprised to find Rick already in the hot tub, and even more suprised to find that he was wearing his board shorts even thought she hadn't heard or seen him come upstairs to change. "Where did you find your board shorts? You never came upstairs."

"They were in the laundry. I just grabbed them and changed. I also grabbed the rest of the bottle of wine and a few snacks if you're interested."

She unbelted the robe and stepped down into the warm water. It felt wonderful as the cooler night air swirled around her. The hot tub was big enough for eight people, so she asked him coyly "So where should I sit?"

He rolled his eyes at her. _Wait a minute..._he_ rolled his eyes at _her_?_ "What was that for?" she asked.

"You. _'Where should I sit?'" _he asked in a sing-songy voice with left no doubt that he was making fun of her. "Like you, of all people, couldn't figure that out." He grabbed her arm and gave it a quick yank until she was sitting down next to him.

When the heated water came in contact with her skin, she gave an all-over shudder, and then settled back on the contoured seat of the hot tub. "This feels sooooo nice..." she said with a purr to her voice. She scooted a little more closely to Rick and rested her head on his shoulder. In response, he reached for and found her hand under the water and entwined her fingers with his. After a few minutes, he turned his head and kissed her lightly on the top of her hair, smelling the familiar cherry scent of her shampoo that was still lingering on her hair. He closed his eyes as his mind registered the scent; it gave him a sense of contentment to know that he was close enough, now had the _right_ to be close enough, to smell the scent that was uniquely her.

He turned around and with his other hand he grabbed her glass of wine that he'd set behind them and handed it to her, and then turned back around and grabbed his own. "A toast?" he asked her.

"To what?"

"How about simple but profound? To us. To the fact that we made it this far, finally. And I'm really glad to be here."

She was struck by the intensity in his eyes. It gave her a lump in her throat. "Me too," she whispered. "I love you."

"And you know I love you." He tilted his head down and gave her a light kiss. Then his face took on a somewhat pouty look like she had just bluffed and bested him at a hand of poker. "Geez, Kate. Why'd you have to do that? Again?"

She looked puzzled at his abrupt change in demeanor. "What? What did I do?"

"You said 'I love you'. First. Again. I mean, I like hearing it. But you know, for someone who describes herself as not good at letting feelings out, you're doing a damn fine job. I'm supposed to be the suave, romantic, dashing, debonair, ruggedly handsome-"

"Full of himself?" she interrupted, still not fully knowing where he was going, but not being able to resist giving him a bit of grief.

He leveled a Castle glare on her. "I'm going to ignore that. Anyway, you are the self professed, original hold-in-my-feelings girl, and I'm generally anything but. And now that we've reached this point and we actually have a relationship, more than just a cop-and-her-shadow one, I finally get a chance to use all of my suave and debonair romantic tendencies on you, but you beat me to it. Just about every time."

Kate just looked at him with a smirk on her face. "Okay, let me get this straight. You're put out not because I said that I love you, which just by itself would freak a lot of guys out, but only because I might have said it before you?" She threw back her head and laughed at the dark night sky. "Oh, my God, that is soooo caveman!" She set her wine glass down and took her other hand out of his as she stood up a little to face him. Then she pounded her chest with her fists in respectable caveman form and told him in a deep voice, "Me big bad Rick! Me love you! Me say first!"

She laughed again, partially at the look on his face. Then she got serious and leaned toward him so their faces were only inches apart. "I guess I'm just turning over a new leaf. We went through a long time of wanting more between us even though we may not have fully known it at the time. But now we know how we feel, and it's out there now, and I don't want there to be any more misunderstandings. And I'm beginning to see that since it's already been said, it can't be unsaid, so it might as well be resaid. Often. Then there are no regrets later."

"Kate."

"Yes?"

"Resaid isn't a word."

When his words registered, she turned her eyes upwards again and muttered, "How does he annoy me, let me count the ways..."

"So now you're murdering Shakespeare?"

She looked back at him. "Just remember, you deserve this." She took a deep breath and then let loose at him. "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love..."

By the end, her words were running together and she was starting to laugh, but she was silenced with him pressing his lips to hers, with him holding her head there with his hands so she couldn't move. After several seconds of silence, his grip eased up and she pulled away, a smirk on her face. "I think I'm definitely winning now."

"You're evil, Ms. Beckett."

"But you love me anyway."

"Yes, I do, but...oh! You cheat! You even took one of mine away!"

"Pretty crafty how I did that, huh? Guess it pays to take notes from a famous author."

"Patterson?" he said, anticipating where she was going.

"Of course." She smiled. "Now you're catching on."

"You wound me."

"Yes, but-" She was silenced when his hand flew out and covered her mouth.

"I love you anyway," he finished for her. "Ha! I got one back!"

She removed his hand from her mouth and gave him a quick kiss. "Come on, loverboy, let's go."

"Where?"

"I'm getting hot in here. Let's go down to the beach and cool off." She started climbing out of the hot tub.

"There's a storm coming!"

"So? I haven't seen any lightning. Are you afraid of the potential for a little rain?"

"But it's cold!"

She stopped and gave him a sultry glance over her shoulder. "If you get cold, Rick, I promise I'll warm you up later, and I won't make any comments about any shrinkage that may happen," she told him, referring to their conversation from earlier in the day.

He winced a little, thinking about the shrinkage potential and how it could affect a male ego, but he rose out of the hot tub and followed her down to the beach.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate had snagged a frisbee that was laying on the deck, and they threw the frisbee around on the sand for a while. Luckily it was a bright color because they only had the dim light from the deck to see anything with. It got more windy as they played, and it made the frisbee sail in some interesting ways, once dipping at the last second and almost nailing Rick in the face.

"You are a dangerous woman with a frisbee," he told her, and then quickly, before she could interrupt, he added, "but I love you anyway."

She smiled a smug smile and nodded her head a little bit. "Now you're getting..."

But she never got to finish her thought because at that moment the floodgates in the sky opened up, dumping sheets of cool, blowing rain down on them. She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sky as the rain droplets pelted her face. Then she looked over at Rick, who was standing there with a stunned look on his face at the sudden deluge. "Where did that come from?" he shouted over the sound of the rain and the ocean waves.

"I think that's our cue. Race you!" she yelled and took off toward the house, only stopping at the foot shower to wash the remaining sand off her feet. Then she quickly but carefully made her way across the somewhat slippery pool deck toward the hot tub. Rick was only about ten feet behind her, so as soon as she was in the water, she pulled him toward her and he fell down in the water with a splash. She looped her arms around his neck and brought his lips to hers for a kiss.

The kiss got hotter until he pulled away, breathing heavily. "What's wrong?" Kate asked him. "Still suffering the effects of shrinkage?"

"No way...not after that kiss. I think the effects I'm experiencing could be better described as 'expandage'."

"I don't think that's a word," she told him, giving him a dry look.

"It should be. It definitely describes me right now. But I thought that before this goes any farther, perhaps we should send a little text to a certain ME?"

Kate narrowed her eyes at him. "Rick, I'm really not sure what to think when you interrupt a hot lip-lock with me because you're thinking about my best friend." She couldn't resist pointing out the obvious and giving him a little grief at the same time.

"Hey! I was NOT thinking about her. It just popped into my brain. But let me grab your phone. Be right back." He climbed out of the pool and disappeared in the house as she retrieved her wine glass for another sip.

When he came back, he was walking slowly and typing out a text. When he was done, he told her, "This might be a little strange, but I mentioned wine, so it could be understandable in that context. And I think the insinuation will .out." He held out the phone so she could read it, so she didn't have to touch it with her wet hands.

_"Jeopardy: People in Florida for $1000, Alex. Answer: 'The woman who is naked in a hot tub with a bottle of nice wine & her dream guy.' Question: 'Who is Kate Beckett?'_

Kate put her hand over her mouth and tried to stifle the eruption of a laugh when she read the message. "Man, that puts it all out there, doesn't it?"

"This is Lanie we're talking about, after all. And we have to get her really in a comfort zone of thinking that we-you and I-are together before tomorrow when we send her the picture of you and Dave. What better way to do it than to suggest that you and I are finally..."

"Boinking?"

"Exactly."

"There's only one thing still wrong with your text, provided we're going for truthfulness." She shot him a sultry look and reached out to run her finger down his chest. "I'm not naked."

He gulped. And then looking down at the phone, he hit send, put the phone on the table and told her, "Not yet. But you will be by the time she reads the text." And he hopped in the hot tub and began to peel the swimsuit off of her body, kissing various parts until he got to the water level, at which point she helped him pull the suit off and tossed it on the deck in back of her. Then she helped him rid himself of his swim trunks, remarking "No shrinkage, but you're right...I think there's a lot of expandage," as she took him in her hand and felt of his length.

And as the storm of nature waged outside, another type of storm waged between them under the canopy, inside the hot tub, as they began to taste each other slowly in the warm water, teasing each other, but then coming together with more intensity as the stormy waves crashed onto the shore and the thunder began to boom in the distance.

_**

* * *

**_

This chapter turned out longer than what I'd intended, so I hope you didn't think it was too wordy or anything. A lot of you have said via your reviews and messages that you like the times when it's just the two of them together, the sweet little moments and the banter. So I tried to do some of that in this chapter.

_**Things are going to start to get good in the next chapter. I already have part of it written, so hopefully it won't take too long to update. I have some surprising little twists coming up-at least I hope that they'll surprise you! I've had the ideas in my mind for what seems like forever, so it'll be fun (or maybe challenging) to get them finally put into words.**_

_**As always, I hope you enjoyed it. And I LOVE your reviews, so if you have time, let me know what you think. Heck, even if you don't have time, hit the review button and let me know what you think. Yes, I'm shamelessly begging. What can I say...I live for the reviews after I post a chapter. I know it's pathetic, but I just love to know what you think, that people are still reading. And if you're still reading this far, Thanks!**_

_**PS-I, too, cannot wait for next Monday! Why did they have to tease us with a measly 6 second clip? What about, oh, 11 minutes like we got for the 'Nikki Heat' episode?**_

_**ETA: Ask (beg) and ye shall receive-after I posted this, I found a spoiler clip that's longer than the preview clip and the 6 second clip. WOW! This is going to be one heck of a show on Monday!**_


	36. Chapter 36

_**I can't believe how fast I cranked this chapter out! I guess I was on a roll! Hope you enjoy it.**_

_**And thanks VERY much for all of those who took the time to review the last chapter and all previous chapters. Welcome to Ariel119, who has been neglecting her dishes and getting caught up on the story.**_

_**By the way, I goofed this morning and was trying to post a correction update to the last chapter, but actually posted it first as a new chapter. What can I say; it was early. I got it deleted pretty quickly, but I know some people saw it, and everyone probably got an update for a new chapter when there wasn't one. So I really didn't mean to psych you all out...Sorry!**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or trademarked items contained below.**_

* * *

Lanie Parrish was nursing a drink on a barstool while watching Esposito and Ryan battle each other in a game of pool. So far, Ryan was besting his partner, thanks to an amazing shot that he banked off the opposite side of the table. She felt her phone vibrate in her coat pocket, and having nothing better to do, took it out of her pocket to check it. She found that she had a text, and the text was from Kate. She took another sip before setting her drink down. This could be good, she thought as she unlocked her phone. And when she read the text, she was really grateful that she'd swallowed that last sip of her drink or she feared that Ryan would have been wearing it right now. She read it a second time, just to fully absorb it, and then she let out a scream that had Esposito totally missing his shot and had Ryan reaching for his gun, lest there was some sort of attack going on.

She slid off her barstool and started hopping around like she had ants in her pants. Ryan nervously glanced around and told the other bar occupants alerted by the scream that everything was all right, while Esposito walked over to her, none too happy at the timing of her scream. "What was that? Did Ryan pay you to do that? I so had that shot."

"Oh, you did not," Ryan countered.

"Oh, shut UP, you two! Look at this!" she told them, shoving the phone toward them, where they read Kate's latest message. Lanie was still practically jumping out of her skin.

The guys read the text: _"Jeopardy: People in Florida for $1000, Alex. Answer: 'The woman who is naked in a hot tub with a bottle of nice wine & her dream guy.' Question: 'Who is Kate Beckett?"_ It was comical how their eyes widened and their mouths fell open simultaneously. They looked at each other, and then looked back at the phone that Lanie was still holding out.

Ryan coughed, and then said "Beckett..."

Esposito just said "Dude..."

Lanie took her phone back, and through raised eyebrows and a smile, said "Huh? Huh?"

Ryan told them "I think that's more information than I needed. That's like...unnatural. It's like thinking about your parents doing it. It's Beckett!" He gave a little shudder as he pressed his fingers to his eyes.

"And Castle!" Lanie squealed again. "Finally! Now we don't have to watch them have eye sex with each other all the time if they're getting the real thing now."

"Or maybe it'll get worse," Esposito surmised.

Ryan looked at his own phone and realized how late it was. "God, I have to get going. Jenny made me promise to get home early to look at flowers for the wedding." He grabbed his coat off the stool and left.

Esposito looked at him leave, and shaking his head, muttered, "He is _so_ whipped." But once he made sure Ryan was gone, he walked over to stand close to Lanie, closer than he would have dared while Ryan was still there.

"I'm trying to think of what to text back to her. What do you say to a message like that?" she asked.

"Nothing. Chica, do you really think she's sitting around waiting for you to text her back?" Lanie smiled a knowing smile at him. Then he lowered his voice and asked her, "So, does her text give you any ideas?" as he grabbed his own coat off the stool.

"Maybe," she said as she picked up her own coat. "My apartment is closer. Let's go."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The mornings were beginning to take on a familiar tone. Sure, it varied who awoke first, and the time that they awoke varied, but it was becoming commonplace that Kate and Rick would always wake up wrapped around each other, legs or arms intertwined, or with someone's arm draped over the other's chest, holding him or her close. Never before had either of them thought of themselves as the 'cuddler' type, but they were both finding that with each other, they were just that.

And this wintery Wednesday-well, wintery for those not currently residing in a Florida beach mansion-it was a day that started like the previous several mornings. Except for the addition of one stuffed alligator pillow. Because on this morning, one vacationing New York City police detective was hugging said alligator pillow, while one vacationing best-selling author was hugging the police detective and the alligator pillow.

And they slept peacefully on.

Well, they slept, at least until the light of the new day began filtering through the closed blinds. Then Rick awoke slowly, stretching his limbs. He noticed the sleeping Kate next to him, a smile forming on his face. It was the same smile that had formed on his face or inside of him for the last several days, whenever he had awoken next to her and realized that she was really there, in the flesh. With the cobwebs of the early morning still littering his brain, he felt as if he hadn't woken up yet from a wonderful dream. But he only had to touch the sleeping form beside him, or nuzzle her hair to inhale her unique scent, to know that this was his new reality. A reality that he really and truly _loved_.

At the thought of nuzzling her hair, he did just that. He buried his face in her neck and planted a kiss there, on the soft skin. He pulled her more closely to him with his arm, noting, with a smile, the fact that she had her arms wrapped around the stuffed alligator that he'd bought her the previous day. After he kissed her, he settled in to wait for her to fully awaken, and he thought about the night they'd had.

They'd probably stayed in the hot tub way too long. After they'd taken refuge in the warm water after their beach playtime that ended by being drenched by the deluge of the stormy sky, they'd come together and had made love slowly but passionately as the storm spewed its fury just feet from them. The canopy kept them sheltered, but the intensity of their coupling was heightened by the sounds of the storm waging around them. It almost made their own storm just that much more intense. When they were finished, she collapsed against him, seemingly boneless, partially from the warm water and partially from the physical tumult they had just shared. But even after they were done with their pleasurable bodily assault on each other, they stayed. She eventually moved off of his lap, out of the terribly intimate position of their coupling, but never strayed far. She stayed by his side, and he kept her there with his arm around her. At some point, she finally got that neck rub that she'd asked for at the very beginning of the evening. It felt heavenly, in more ways than one, because his slow massaging of her muscles (along with the brief forays of his hands into areas nowhere near her neck or shoulders) was the catalyst in them engaging in a second round of hot tub bliss.

When they finally trudged up to the bedroom, it wasn't all that late, time-wise, but because of the activity in the hot water, it felt as if they'd been up all night. They collapsed into the bed, barely able to pull back the covers. Kate, who had placed the stuffed alligator on the bed when they'd returned home from their kayaking adventure, grabbed it in a hug as she sank into the cool cotton sheets. Rick collapsed side of her and barely managed to pull a sheet up to cover them, but of course he found enough energy to wrap his arm around her (and the alligator) and he held her close to him and spooned with her. For as closely as their bodies were as they slept, they really didn't even need the king-sized bed; they could have gotten by with a twin.

Now, awake in the morning, he sneaked a peek at the clock on the nightstand and found that it was about seven-thirty in the morning. He wanted to take Kate down to the beach this morning before their new friends arrived, so he knew they had to be up and about soon. So he began to work at waking her up the best way he knew how. Although to call it work was _really_ a misnomer.

He began to nuzzle her neck, where he again inhaled the scent that was uniquely her. He took his hand and repositioned some of her hair further back, away from her face, so he could pepper some kisses at her hairline on the side of her face. Upon feeling that, she stirred a bit, and a brief smile lit her face before she dropped back into slumber.

He watched her sleep for a minute or two, just gazed at the face he had come to know so well, for all of its different looks and expressions. But then he had to try again, and really, trying to wake her up-this way-was the fun part. So again, he placed some light kisses along her hairline, down to her neck, and then back up where he took her earlobe in his mouth and rubbed it ever so lightly in between his teeth. When he did that, he heard a low "ummm" come from her, and he released her earlobe to look at her face once again. Her eyes were still closed, but she had a relaxed smile on her face as she turned back toward him and raised her other arm over her body in search of him. He wasn't sure how she did it with her eyes still closed, but that arm zeroed in with pinpoint accuracy on the back of his neck, and she pulled his head to her for a good morning kiss.

"Good morning, beautiful," he told her after the kiss.

"Rick, don't call me beautiful, not now. I shudder to think what I look like after we got drenched last night and I went to bed with wet, messy hair."

"Don't worry, you're still beautiful. I, on the other hand, got just as drenched as you and I'm sure that right now, my hair is rivaling the Bieber-head style of your birthday."

She untangled her other arm from between them and reached up with both hands to run her fingers through his hair. "It's not...too bad," she told him, trying to stifle a smile but not succeeding very well. He narrowed his eyes at her. "Oh, come on, your hair is always so perfectly coiffed that it's fun to see you with it flat in some places and sticking up in twenty different directions in others.

"Fun for you, maybe. I may just scare myself when I look in the mirror."

He barely had time to register the gleam in her eye before she said "Don't worry, I'll still love you anyway."

Although always touched at hearing the words, he flopped back on the bed at realized she had again bested him in their new little rivalry from the day before and said "Ah! You did it again! It's too early in the morning for that!"

She laughed and turned around fully, propping herself up on her elbow and looking down at his face. "Hey, buster, you're the one that was nibbling on my ear and woke me up. You've been up for longer than I have!"

He pulled her over his body. "Yes. Yes I have," he said, the alternate meaning of his response to her comment clear as she caught the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice. "Wanna do something about it?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

"Of course," she told him, "but I worry that we're turning into a couple of sex maniacs."

"Remember, Kate? We're on vacation. Just go with it."

She looked away thoughtfully, as if considering what he said. Then she looked back at his face and said simply, "Okay." And then she leaned into a searing kiss, as Rick decided that the beach could wait for a little while.

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After they finally got out of bed, they showered, together, but for the first time, showering was all they did inside the large unit. Kate laughed that it was much quicker this way, with not being distracted by 'multitasking', as she had called it before, although Rick remarked that he'd developed a new fondness for multitasking in the shower.

Kate decided it was time to bring out the fourth of her new swimsuits. The timing was actually wonderful...the only other one she would have considered wearing was the black one from the night before, and since she'd never taken care of it after she threw it onto the pool deck, it was probably still out there, still soaked with rainwater from the storm the night before. And there was no way she'd wear either of the other two suits, not when going out on the boat with others, and especially not when she'd potentially be posing for a picture wearing a swimsuit-a picture that would be sent back to work colleagues.

Luckily, the fourth suit was good on all accounts. It was a one-piece, hot pink little number, made of a shimmery fabric that hugged her like a second skin. The sides did have several areas cut out like the monokini, but it was much more subtle; like strips of fabric that connected the back to the front. If she was in the sun a lot in this suit, she would definitely have interesting tan lines; she would look striped. But all in all, the suit was probably more on the modest side; by the fabric and the design on the sides, it more gave the illusion of being risque than actually being risque.

It also had the added benefit of having a matching skirt that fit and blended in so well with the suit that it looked like it could be all the same garment. Smiling, she wondered if Rick would like her in this as well as he'd liked her that first day in the black one. And in the monokini. And definitely in the red string bikini. Smiling, she walked out of the large closet where she'd been changing and found Rick pulling on his board shorts. He caught sight of the bright pink of her ensemble just as he was putting his second leg into the shorts. And he stopped dead in his motion, his mouth falling open. "You like?" she asked him.

Rick hadn't seen any new swimsuits in several days. Each one had been a shock to see initially, on Kate, each was a wonderful, dreamy fantasy that had come to life. The first two he had seen when they hadn't yet been romantically involved, and it had been a temptation to keep himself sane and in control after he caught sight of her in them. And he'd seen the third, the little red bikini, shortly before they had become _very_ romantically involved. Still, despite the fact that they were now very close, and he'd seen her naked (and loved it) more times than he could count, the sight of her in the new hot pink shimmery number was enough to have his brain short-circuiting. Once he could find his voice again, he could only manage "Oh...yeah...um..." And then, being totally distracted and forgetting what he was in the process of doing, he tried to walk toward her. However, trying to walk while having only one leg on the ground and the other halfway into his shorts was not a good combination. As he tried to step forward, he found that his leg, tangled in the inside mesh part of his shorts, was not very useful at actually walking. Or even at supporting him.

Like some of the other calamities that had befallen them (mostly him), it seemed to happen in slow motion. Kate was smiling at first his dumbfounded look, and then at the gleam of male appreciation in his gaze. But then the smile left her face as she realized that he was going to try to move toward her but still had one foot caught in his shorts. Rick, on his end, was so fixated on the shimmery pink thing on Kate that he only realized something was wrong when his leg refused to move forward. Kate was too far away to really do anything in the split second she had after she realized what was about to happen.

So Kate watched as the look on Rick's face changed from the smile (over her attire), to surprise (over the fact that he couldn't walk), to shock (over the fact that he was headed toward the leg of the large, heavy end table by the couch in the master suite), all in the space of about a half second. Then, before she even really move toward him, she watched him disappear from view as he crashed down on the floor. And when she saw the table lurch and heard his grunt of pain, she knew that the floor wasn't the only thing he had hit.

She ran over to him and knelt down by him. "God, Rick, what the hell just happened? Did you forget how to put on pants? Are you okay?" He was holding the top right side of his head and was groaning.

"Ow! It hurts! Geez, Beckett, do you think you could possibly give me a little warning the next time you put on something like that so I can make sure I won't injure myself? You, woman, can be lethal. You almost took me out yesterday with your cop moves. Now I just took one look at you and look what happened. Ow."

"It's not my fault you can't manage to do what most four year olds are capable of doing." She rolled her eyes at him. "Now let me look at your head. I want to make sure it's not bleeding." She pulled his hand away and moved his hair around, gently touching his scalp. "You're lucky the leg of that table is round. I don't see any blood, but I see a nice red little lump starting in there. Doctor Beckett says you should take a couple of Advil now and take some more out on the boat later."

"What does Doctor Beckett say about a kiss to make it better?"

She started talking in a soothing voice, but halfway through her tone changed. "Doctor Beckett says she'd be happy to give you a kiss, although it's doubtful that there are actually any medicinal qualities in said kiss. However, before said kiss is administered, Doctor Beckett requests that you _stand up and pull up your freaking shorts because you look ridiculous sitting there with your butt hanging out_." She finished in a no-nonsense, get-on-with-it type of voice.

"Hey, I'm injured-all because of you, I might add-and you tell me I look ridiculous?"

"If the shorts fit, Castle."

"You wound me."

"No, once again, you wounded yourself. And next time, just sit down on the bed when you're putting your shorts on, okay?" She patted his cheek reassuringly.

Reminded of the other incident, he requested, "Please tell me that you're not going to tell Joelle about the specifics of this?"

"The head bump may come up, but we can just tell her that you lost your balance. I think anything else is way too much information. I like these people. You do too. Do you really want to scare them off this fast? Besides, I don't think the world is ready for quite that much information about you. Or the visual. Let's just keep it out little secret, okay?

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After Rick downed some Advil (and pulled up his shorts), they had a quick breakfast of coffee and some fruit and toast, and then Rick dragged her out to the beach. "Although I've never actually been here during a storm, I've heard that the next morning afterwards is a great time to go look for shells. A lot get washed up because of the rough water."

Rick grabbed a shell bag and they began their hunt, although more on the beach than in the water, because they didn't want to get wet before they went out on the boat. Kate, conscious of the cut she'd had on her foot, remembered to grab her beach shoes. They walked around for a while, their eyes downcast toward the sand to spot any treasures washed up the night before. It did seem as though there were more shells in general, although a lot of them seemed to be broken. Still, they found some nice ones, some relatively large to be as perfect as they were with no animal inside. After they had searched in the immediate vicinity of the house and had found several treasures for the shell bag, Rick suggested they go back up to the house to finish getting everything together for their day trip.

Right as scheduled, a few minutes before ten o'clock, Joelle and Dave pulled up in their rental car. After exchanging pleasantries, everyone got back in their cars for the drive to the marina, to enjoy a fun day out on a boat, and to engage in the next chapter of 'The Punking of Ms. Parrish'.

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That's it for now. In the next chapter, I promise there will be some good developments in the Punking plan.

_**Once again, thanks for all of those who reviewed, and continue to leave reviews! I love to get them, and read them, and I love to know what parts of the story you like. So, that said, please don't forget to leave a review!**_

_**Thanks for reading!**_


	37. Chapter 37

_**Thanks for the reviews! Please...keep 'em coming! I hope you like this chapter! Lanie should be having a nice little conniption by the end of this chapter...**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, but it sure is fun writing about them!**_

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They pulled up to the marina and were lucky enough to find parking places next to each other. They started getting out of the cars and gathering their bags to take along on the boat, and when everyone had their gear, Rick let them down a path. "We're looking for slip number seven," he told them as he consulted a sign. "This way," he directed, turning right and walking past a small building.

They found slip number seven, and then all stood staring at the boat. Well, all except for Rick, who hadn't stopped and was going down the pier so he could climb aboard. Finally, Dave said, "No, this isn't right. Look at the size of that boat. That can't be our boat. And where's the rest of the group?"

Rick turned around. "Come on, the daylight's a-wastin'. Yes, this is our boat. And we _are_ the group."

Joelle and Dave were standing there, staring at the huge boat, practically a yacht, with their mouths hanging open, not really knowing what to say. It was obvious they never expected this; a private charter on a boat easily twice or three times the size of any normal boat. Kate was only mildly surprised. Finally, Dave got a big smile on his face and bounded onto the boat after Rick as Joelle turned to Kate and said "But he...it's...oh, my God, it's huge. You don't look surprised."

"No, not really. Maybe a little. Rick just likes things...big."

"I guess so," she agreed, still sounding amazed.

Kate continued, "Remember, I was kidnapped onto a private plane and I've been living in a beach mansion for the last week and a half. And eating insane amounts of ice cream. This is just more of the same. I'm getting to the point where I'd be surprised if he _didn't_ plan something extravagant."

"Wow," Joelle said simply.

"Shall we?" Kate asked, indicating for Joelle to climb aboard the boat.

"Might as well." Shaking her head with a smile, Joelle climbed aboard to find out where her husband had gone, and to explore the massive floating structure called a boat.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Their captain gave them the itinerary for the day, which, basically, was nothing specific. He gave them several options for occupying their day: deep sea fishing, of course, swimming, snorkeling, or cruising around the nearby islands. To start, they just agreed to take a leisurely cruise around the islands. If, during their cruise, the captain came across any good areas for fishing, he'd tell let them know so they could decide if they wanted to stop or not.

After they got underway and everyone applied some sunscreen and settled down in the seats on the open back part of the boat, Rick went into the galley, which he had arranged to be stocked with drinks, as well as snacks and lunch items. He yelled to the group and asked what they wanted to drink; he came back out with the requested bottles of water for the ladies, and beers for Dave and himself.

Kate stripped off her skirt and leaned back on one of the long seats, stretching her long legs out to use it like a lounge chair. Rick was mesmerized by her movements, still getting used to the new shimmery pink suit, until she caught sight of him staring and told him to wake up. To make him focus on something else besides her, she started talking about the Punking Plan, and they filled in the other couple on the latest developments (leaving out the hot tub details, of course), and discussed taking a picture of Dave and Kate that afternoon, and then sending it to Lanie. "I would so love to be a fly on the wall when she gets that picture of you and Dave, and she has to question everything she _thinks _is happening."

When they'd been seated for a while, just soaking up the sun and the scenery, Dave slapped his leg. "Oh, I almost forgot. Hey, Rick, give me your phone," he said as he got his own phone out of his bag.

"Should I worry?" Rick asked, but handed over his phone nonetheless, unlocking it before he did.

"With him, I'd certainly wonder if I were you," Joelle joked.

Dave took the phone and placed a call on his own phone, walking over to the other side of the boat when he did. He held his phone with one hand and pressed some buttons on Rick's phone every now and then. They could hear snippets of the conversation, but couldn't really make out anything definite over the dull sound of the boat's motor, the sound of the waves crashing against the boat, or the sound of the wind in their ears. The conversation among the other three had lulled as they all watched Dave and wondered what he was doing. Kate and Rick alternated looking at Joelle, who finally laughed and threw up her hands in surrender, saying "Hey, I may be married to the guy, but that doesn't mean he tells me what's going through his mind at any given time. And frankly, sometimes I don't really want to know."

Just then, they noticed that Dave was taking the phone away from his ear and was walking toward them, a big smile on his face. When he got close enough to Rick, he dropped Rick's phone in his lap. "Universal Domination, version four," he smugly told Rick.

Rick's mouth dropped open in surprise and he spewed out, "Are you _kidding_ me?" He grabbed his phone and looked at it excitedly.

"Would I kid about Universal Domination?"

Rick looked pleasantly shocked as he turned to the phone and started pressing buttons. Kate and Joelle just looked at each other and shrugged, still not quite sure what was going on, even though Rick and Dave were obviously on the same wavelength.

"Rick, care to enlighten us?" Kate prompted.

He just responded excitedly "It's Universal Domination!", as if that explained it all.

Kate looked at Dave for help, and he said "The game that we were playing at dinner the other night? I had my buddy download the beta of the new version to Rick's phone." Rick was oblivious to them, just sitting there pushing buttons and making explosion sound effects of his own to supplement those coming from the phone. "After he arranged this little getaway, I thought he'd appreciate having the game. It was the least I could do. And they always want new beta testers who are over the age of ten."

"Sometimes I'm not totally sure of the age thing, but on behalf of him," she gestured at Rick, who had his cheeks puffed out in preparation for making a big explosion sound, "thanks." And then after another minute or two of letting Rick play, Kate reached over and grabbed the phone from Rick, telling him, "Enough for now."

"But I just got the asteroids to glow!"

"And they will live to glow again another day. But right now, let's enjoy the boat. How about if we stop and take a swim. The water seems pretty calm." She looked at Joelle and Dave, who nodded.

They anchored the boat and prepared to go for a swim when they heard a phone ring. Recognizing the ring tone, Kate looked at Rick and said "Oh, no! It's Lanie."

"Well, you weren't going to call her quite yet, but you know what to say. You were pure brilliance with Ryan. You can do it." He squeezed her shoulder and gave her a 'good luck' type of grin.

So she pulled the phone out of her bag and, taking a deep breath as she walked to the other side of the boat, answered it. "Hey, Lanie."

"Don't you 'hey Lanie' me like this is some ordinary day!"

"Why, whatever do you mean?" Kate asked her, with a hint of humor in her voice.

"I mean that it seems I need a crowbar to pry things out of you. So, how are you and your 'new man'?" Lanie put special emphasis on the words 'new man', so Kate knew that she was on the right track.

"It's, ummmm...nice." She was intentionally vague.

"Girl, that little Jeopardy text you sent me last night sounded a lot more than _nice_."

"Sorry, I shouldn't have sent that. We'd had some wine...got in the hot tub...you know. I was feeling a little giddy."

"I'll say. So how was it...your game of Jeopardy?"

"Lanie!" Kate exclaimed. But then decided she might as well start the ruse, so she lowered her voice and said "I'll just say that Jeopardy is my new favorite game. I was a big winner."

"I just bet you were!"

"Especially during Double Jeopardy..." she trailed off, her voice going even lower during the last part.

There was multiple second pause where Kate was certain that Lanie was decyphering her hidden meaning. As a precautionary measure for what she suspected might be coming, Kate held the phone away from her ear a bit. And it was with good reason, because after that pause, Lanie erupted in a scream followed by 'Oh. My. God!'

"Holy crap, Lanie! Tone it down! Where are you, anyway? You scream like that in a precinct and you're going to have cops swarming all over you!"

"Don't worry...empty room."

"Thank goodness."

"So I'm sitting here in the middle of a drab, empty room in the cold New York winter, and you're in a tropical paradise turning into a hot tub sex machine. Are you at least getting out in the sun a little bit, or are you spending all of your time indoors playing your new version of Jeopardy? I mean, girl, nobody is going to believe you've been in Florida if you come back pale because you spent all your time between the sheets."

"Don't worry, we're out on a boat now, in fact. And we're both even clothed. I took Ryan's advice and we're going on a little deep sea fishing excursion."

"You...fishing?"

"Hey, Ryan said it was a good 'guy thing' to do and I wanted to do something nice. New relationship and everything, you know."

"Ha! You could probably just sit in a chair and he'd be happy if he could stare at you." She paused for a moment. "So, really, how is everything going? Seriously? I know it must have been a shock for you, how you came to be down there and everything. Not that I don't think it was a good thing all in all, but I could see how you might be stressed about it."

Kate just laughed. "Don't worry, Lanie. Castle and I are okay with what happened. It was unorthodox, and I was mad at first, but I came around. And I can honestly say now that it's all just so great. You should see everything! Yes, we are getting out in the sun, quite a bit, actually. And you can tell Ryan that I took his advice. Hey, let me send you a picture of us when we get off the phone. Then you can _see _my tan and my man. And when we get back to New York, let's plan something, all of us."

"Definitely! Us working stiffs back here need to hear all about this vacation of yours."

"We'll do something next week. Why don't we just go to the Old Haunt on Monday night?"

"Sure. I'll tell Jav-uh, Esposito and Ryan, and I'll see if the Captain can come." Lanie instantly regretted her slip, hoping that Kate didn't pick up on her unusual familiarity with Esposito by starting to call him by his first name.

"Great! I just can't wait for you guys to meet him. You're going to love him!"

"Meet who?" Lanie, still thinking about her verbal slip, wasn't really keeping up with Kate.

"Uh, Dave?"

"Dave who? Who's Dave?"

"_Dave,_ Lanie! Will you stay with me here? Isn't that who we're talking about? I thought you'd want to meet him."

It took Lanie a second, but then she said dumbly "Dave? Girl, what are_ you_ talking about? Do you have heat stroke or something?" She wasn't sure why, but she was getting a bad feeling about this.

On her end of the phone, Kate quickly gave Rick a thumbs up and smiled a sly smile before getting back into character. "Earth to Lanie? Hello? Dave, the guy I met down here last week? Oh, I suppose I didn't mention his name to you before. Sorry. I told Ryan about him, kind of, and I was sure he would have said something to you."

"Well, yeah, he... Wait a minute! A guy? You met a guy?" Lanie trailed off, still confused and not really knowing exactly what to say.

"What is with you? Yes, I met a guy! We covered that last week sometime."

"Castle." Lanie supplied. Something about this was getting weird. She was going to have to find Ryan and Esposito. She left the conference room and started walking toward the homocide bullpen.

Kate continued, acting deliberately obtuse. "Yeah, I guess Castle is a guy, although he is kind of metrosexual. I'll ask him if he wants to meet us on Monday; it is his bar, after all. Sound good? Anyway, what's with the memory loss thing? You're the one who kept pumping me for details about Dave. I mean, I can hardly turn around without you texting me or calling me, asking what I did, expecting all sorts of juicy details or something."

"Yeah..."

"I _know_ I told you about Dave...nice body, beach walks, ice water, Jeopardy... Geez, Lanie, we were _just_ talking about him. Are _you_ feeling all right?"

"Dave?" Lanie said again dumbly. "Ryan did mention him." But then, as the meaning of what Kate was trying to say finally fully dawned in Lanie's brain as she walked down the hall, she stopped dead in her tracks. "But we thought..._YOU MEAN DAVE IS REAL_? _THERE IS A REAL, LIVE DAVE?_" Lanie all but shouted the last words into the phone, so loudly that Kate had to hold the phone away from her ear. Rick was able to hear Lanie clearly and he had to turn around and shove his fist in his mouth to keep from bursting out laughing.

Kate, however, drew on some incredible acting ability that he never knew she had. "Geez, Lanie, gonna get me a new eardrum?" Then she put a slightly embarrassed tone in her voice as she told her friend, "Well, I know I told Ryan he was hypothetical, but I just didn't want to get into too much detail with the guys. You know how they are. Why wouldn't you think he was real? What...you think I'm 12 or something and made up a fake boyfriend? Geez. But yeah, he's _very_ real, if you know what I mean. He has real arms, real legs, and real...other parts. And they're _really_ nice parts." Rick whipped his head back toward her and gaped at her, half of him wanting to bust out laughing and half of him starting to get irrationally jealous over her mentioning some other guy's male parts as 'really nice'. When Kate saw him gaping at her, she was the one who had to turn away so she would be able to continue her improvisation. Kate was lucky she didn't see Joelle or Dave either; they were totally captivated listening to her side of the performance and when Dave heard the line about his 'parts', he fist pumped the air, which earned him a swat on the shoulder from his wife.

Kate made it seem like she had something going on and took the phone away from her mouth as she said, "What? Oh, okay. Give me one second." Putting her phone back by her mouth, she said "Lanie, I have to run. They're calling us now. But I'll send you that picture so you can see what Dave looks like."

Lanie was beginning to function again, and she had questions. Boy, did she have questions! As Kate finished talking about sending the picture, Lanie said to her "Nuh-uh, girl! Don't you think about getting off that phone! You're down there with _Castle_! You can't just go off and pick up some other guy! The hot tub...Dave? Oh, my God...Castle! Ummm...no. No, no, no! What the _hell_ is a Dave? What the hell are you_ talking _about?"

"Oh, don't worry, Castle's fine. He and Dave are having fun playing video games. They get along really well," Kate said offhandedly. Then she put an honest-sounding apologetic tone in her voice. "Lanie, I know we haven't talked very much, but I really have to go. Just text me...it's easier than a call down here. Sorry. See you soon!" She pushed end on the phone as Rick swept her into a grand hug and pressed his lips to hers in a loud smacking kiss as he dipped her dramatically. "That performance was worthy of an Oscar!" he gushed. "Especially for something off the cuff when she surprised you with her call!"

"God, I think at the end she was ready to get on a plane to come down here to slap me and console you because I supposedly hooked up with Dave."

Joelle laughed at Rick's exhuberance, but concurred with him. "It was pretty good. I've got to hand it to you; if I'd had to do that, I would have been stammering-no, wait, I would have been laughing my butt off and would have spoiled the whole thing! Now, I never thought I'd say this to another woman, but go sit on my husband's lap and look like you want to eat him alive so we can send that picture. Gotta strike while the iron is hot."

Joelle gestured to Dave. "Honey, take off your shirt. If we're going to do this, we have to do it right. And here, let me spray some of this oil on your chest. Some well-oiled pecs are just what this picture needs, don't you think?" she finished, addressing Kate with the last question.

"Definitely. Gotta love a set of tanned, well-oiled pecs."

Still with his arm around Kate, Rick now had a bewildered look on his face and said "Wha...What?"

She patted his own pecs and laughed. "Don't worry, Rick. I can look, but I won't touch. Well, I won't touch except for the picture." She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek while Joelle sprayed her husband. After giving Joelle her phone to take the picture, she went to stand beside Dave.

But suddenly, standing there next to Dave, about to sit on his _lap_, for goodness sakes, she had a brief flash of uncertainty. But then she squashed it down. The ruse was going so well...especially considering Lanie's reaction to the bombshell she just dropped in the phone call. She couldn't chicken out now just because it felt a little weird. It was just like going undercover, and she'd done that countless times. Of course, she'd never had to pretend to be romantically involved with someone while the person she really _was_ romatically involved with was standing right there in front of her, watching. That was definitely a new one.

Dave looked at her with a curious expression. "Come, on; I don't bite. Sit."

But she wasn't one to shy away from a challenge just because it felt a little strange. So she took a breath and eased herself down on Dave's lap. She looped her arm around Dave's shoulders and felt his hand on her shoulder, close to her neck. Then she looked up and trained her eyes on Joelle, who was aiming the phone at them, and made it a point to block out Rick, even though he was standing right next to Joelle.

"Kate, lean your head against Dave's more. Good." She put the phone down before she snapped the picture. "Dave, come on. You look like you have a swordfish shoved up your butt. Now pretend I'm wearing that little red lace thing I got for our anniversary and smile. Good. Kate, think about Rick in a little speedo and smile." Snap. "Much better. Now just hold on...I'm going to take a few so we can pick the best one. Kate, put your other arm around Dave too. Good, yeah, like that. Now smile." She looked at the picture. "Oops, Kate, I think you blinked. Try it again. Smile." Snap. "Yup, that one was better. Okay, honey? Put your arm down and around her waist and clasp both your hands together around her. Remember, keep your heads close together." Snap. "Good. Okay, that should do it. Take a look and let me know if one of those will work." She held out the phone to Kate.

Kate hopped off of Dave's lap and took the phone from Joelle, as Dave got up from the chair. Walking over to Rick, she put her free arm around his back and leaned into him as she scrolled through the pictures. She felt his arm encircle her as she looked at the pictures several times, finally deciding that the third one was probably the best. "What do you think?" she asked him, turning her face up toward him.

Looking right at her, he said simply "Sure."

"No, which one do you think is best?"

"That one is fine with me." Now he was looking off beyond her, but his arm was wrapped a little more tightly around her shoulders. She looked at him closely, and realized that he looked uncomfortable.

"Rick?" she asked softly. "Did you even look at the pictures?" Joelle and Dave were over by the railing now, looking out at the waves, and she didn't want to say anything too loudly while Rick was acting so strangely.

"Uh...no. It's OK. Just pick whatever one you want."

She looked at him, and noticed the way he was avoiding looking at the pictures, even avoiding looking at her right now, although he still had his arm around her. She could feel the sudden tension in his muscles that hadn't been there just minutes ago when he had grabbed her for the kiss after her phone call. She was beginning to have an inkling of what might be bothering him. She touched his cheek, urging his eyes to meet hers. "Rick?" she asked, questioningly. "What's wrong?"

He finally looked at her and sighed. He let go of her arm and grabbed her hand, quickly starting ot lead her over to the other side of the boat, past the corner of the main cabin and out of sight of Joelle and Dave. As they rounded the corner, he pressed her quickly up against the wall and claimed her lips in a hard kiss. He pressed his hips against hers, and with his mouth plundering hers, ran his hands up and down her sides. She responded to the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and curling one of her hands into his hair. As he kissed her, with a lot of pent-up passion, she was reminded of one of the first kisses they'd shared, in the surf. She was now pretty certain what was the cause of his suddenly strange demeanor and actions. Soon, though, she broke free, still conscious of their friends on the other side of the boat, not far away. Although a little interlude might be tempting, now wasn't really the time or the place.

Despite her heavy breathing, she looked at him after their kiss, and asked him, "So was that the equivalent of peeing on me to mark your territory?"

He stared at her for a minute before looking away, and then gave her a small half-smile when his eyes met hers again. He knew what she meant. "Sorry," was all he said.

Her fingers were playing with the hair at the back of his neck, and she gave him a quick little peck on the lips. "You're jealous." She didn't ask the question; she didn't need to.

"Yes. And that's a fact that I'm not terribly proud of."

"You're being stupid."

"I know."

"You know it was just for the ruse with Lanie and the guys."

"I know."

"You know Dave is married and his wife, for God's sake, was taking the picture of us!"

"I know."

"You know I love _you_."

"I know."

"So what was the problem then?"

He took a deep breath, not sure how to put it into words. "Despite knowing all of that, I felt...it was...watching you felt a little like it felt when I saw you kissing Demming a couple of times."

"A little? Then what got you so agitated?"

"It was only a little like that because when I was confronted with the reality of you sitting on some other guy's lap, wearing _that_," he glanced down to her suit, "I found that watching you just now was about a hundred times worse than it felt with Demming. And then you wouldn't look at me. And you're..." he couldn't finish his thought.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm what?"

He looked away before looking back at her, as if embarrassed. "You're mine now. You weren't then. We weren't together then."

He sounded so sweet. And so torn up, even though the whole thing was silly. She put a finger over his mouth, and he kissed it. "I wouldn't look at you just now because I had to seem happy with Dave. I couldn't act happy with Dave if I was looking at you watching me with another guy. Believe me, just posing for the picture felt weird enough for me. I couldn't add more weirdness by watching you too. Okay?"

"Okay."

"So are you going to be understanding when it's my turn?"

"What do you mean, 'your turn'?"

"When we go back and the young, nubile fangirls start passing you their numbers or asking you to sign their protruding body parts, what are you going to do when I get jealous?"

His face brightened. "You're going to get jealous?"

She swatted his arm. Leave it to him to actually want her to get jealous! Oh, that male ego of his! "What if I do? Are you going to give me a reason to be jealous?"

He got serious again, and she realized the big ego act was him messing with her for a moment. "You, my love," he said, leaning forward to peck her lips, "have nothing to worry about. Everyone else pales in comparison to you." Then to her eternal surprise, he began to sing to her in a low voice.

_"Maybe millions of people go by,  
but they all disappear from view.  
And I Only Have Eyes For You."  
_

And most astounding to her was that he hit every note perfectly, sung in a rich voice, albeit softly. Although the sentiment of the verse and the words weren't lost on her, her mouth still opened in a little 'o' when she heard the beautiful sounding words come out of his mouth. "You _can_ sing!"

"Never said I couldn't." He smiled his cocky, half-smile at her.

"But the Bieber thing..."

"...would not have been nearly as memorable if I had hit the notes correctly," he interrupted.

She shook her head. "Mark my words, I will _so_ get revenge on you for that."

"I'd expect nothing less. It's what you do best, after all."

"So...are you good? Are we good?"

"We're good. Let's go get Joelle and Dave and get some lunch. But first," he said, picking up the phone from where she had set it, "let's send the picture. The second one is the best."

"I thought you didn't look at them."

"I saw when Joelle was taking them. The second one made me feel the worst, so it's probably the most convincing picture."

"Got it." That was an interesting bit of logic, but it made a strange kind of sense. She pushed some buttons on her phone, typing a quick message. "There. Sent. Now we just have to wait for her to see the picture."

"Don't worry. I don't think it will be too long. I think all hell is about to break loose at the precinct. _Now_ let's get some lunch, and have a drink to celebrate."

_**

* * *

**_

There it is: the big reveal of Dave to Lanie and the guys. Although the whole thing isn't quite over yet; the next chapter will contain some of the further reaction of Lanie and she'll be getting the guys involved. And depending on how far we get, Rick may even get a phone call himself...

_**Disclaimer: I have no idea if a game can be downloaded onto a phone like Dave did for Rick. But hey, I figured if you can do that with iTunes, then I'm sure a great hacker could figure out how to load it. So just try to overlook that part if you don't believe it. I just wanted someone to be able to do something for Rick that he wouldn't be able to do/buy/get for himself. And we know he'd love a game that hasn't been released yet!**_

_**I have been working on the Lanie/Kate conversation off and on for several weeks, believe it or not; writing, tweaking, adding, deleting and just generally proofing it. I've probably worked on that section more than any other single piece of this story. So can you please tell me what you think of it? Like it? Hate it? Let me know...please? I read every review (sometimes more than once) and I get a little happy feeling whenever I see an alert for a new review. Thanks in advance!**_

_**And yeah...we're down to less than two days until Knockdown! Yippee!**_


	38. Chapter 38

_**Thanks for the positive reviews for the last chapter. I'm so happy you all seemed to like the big Dave reveal!**_

_**One potential milestone to note...with Chapter 36, I believe this fic has become the longest Castle fanfic here! If anyone finds that's not the case, let me know, but until then, I'll just bask in my little bubble of happiness! Truly, a big thanks to everyone for sticking with it this long. I think the next chapters will progress slightly faster than it has so far, so not too much longer to go now!**_

_**This chapter itself is a short little thing, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. I thought it would be nice to post one more chapter today, while people are waiting patiently for Knockdown. Oh, the wait!**_

_**And a little shout-out to my Packers for making it to the Super Bowl! Woo hoo!**_

_**Disclaimer: Nothing has changed...I still don't own anyone.**_

* * *

Lanie walked into the bullpen looking shell-shocked. She plopped down in the chair next to Esposito's desk and let out a big sigh as she put her hands up in the air, and then let them drop to her lap in front of her. Then she leaned back in the chair and just shook her head.

"What happened? Did you get another 400 pound guy to post?" Esposito asked her.

"I just talked to Kate."

Esposito was wondering what was wrong with her. When she got the text the night before, she'd screamed and done a happy dance in the bar when she found out that Beckett and Castle had finally done the big nasty. And they'd went back to her place and had an incredibly hot session between the sheets themselves. She kept giggling about Beckett and Castle off and on, and he was starting to think it was mildly creepy, especially while she was in bed with him, but hey, it was totally _hot_ so he wasn't going to complain. He just chalked it up to the fact that she'd been waiting so long for them to get together, had invested so much mental energy in watching them fight and banter and resist each other, that hearing about them being together was like a drug to her or something. She was on a high.

She raised her eyes to his and shook her head again, looking like anything but a person on a high. "Kate has a boyfriend." She sounded like she'd lost her best friend.

"Yeah. I know that." He lowered his voice. "Exactly how many times did you say that very thing all during last night?"

"No, son, you don't _get it_. And I wish I didn't either." She looked around to make sure nobody was around them, and continued with her own voice lowered. "Last night, I was talking about Kate and Castle. Apparently I was...not entirely accurate about things. _I_ don't even get it." She shook her head again.

Esposito gave her the smallest of smiles and said "You certainly got it last night. We both did..."

Lanie picked up the newspaper laying on the corner of his desk and whacked him over the head with it. "Will you be serious?"

"Fine...what? She's _didn't_ do the big nasty in the hot tub?"

"Oh, she's a hot tub sex machine, all right," she told him, repeating to him what she had just called Kate on the phone call. "Just not with Castle!"

"What?" This time he was the one who shook his head, leaning back with a little smile. "No way."

"Yes way!" She nodded her head emphatically.

"Not Castle? What...you mean someone else?" She nodded again, and he countered by shaking his head. "I repeat...no way."

"Yes! Someone else! Your 'Dave'...apparently he's real."

"Dave?"

"Yeah...the hypothetical guy that Ryan was telling us about? Remember him? Well apparently he's not so hypothetical after all."

Esposito sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his chest. "Sorry, but there is just no way that there could be anyone else in the picture. You _know_ how those two are." Lanie was almost getting mad because he was sitting there smirking at her. She _knew_ what she heard from Kate. She wished she could block out the memory, but it was there. She'd heard it.

"Uh huh! You didn't hear her on the phone."

"Come on, what did she say? 'I'm banging another guy right under Castle's nose?'"

"No...you doofus! She kept going on and on about us meeting him and all of this other stuff and I didn't know what she was talking about, and then wham! I realized that she was talking about 'Dave' like he was a real person. So I asked her and she said yeah, she'd told me about her new guy last week. But I thought she just meant Castle! And then I asked her about Castle and she said that he and this Dave really got along really well and they had fun playing video games."

"So what are you two up to?" Esposito and Lanie were so engrossed in their conversation about Kate that they didn't even notice Ryan walk up. The both looked over at him, and he looked from one to the other like he was watching volleying in a tennis match. "What?" he asked again when they still didn't say anything.

Lanie sighed. "It's Dave."

Ryan wrinkled his brows. "Who's Dave?"

Lanie held out her hand toward him, palm up, and shook it at him like she was making a point. "Exactly!"

Ryan looked at Esposito and said "Huh?"

Espo tried to explain. "Remember when you talked to Beckett and she told you about her new man, 'Dave'?"

"Yeah," Ryan responded. "The hypothetical guy that she 'met'," he said, doing air quotes around the word 'met', "the Castle pseudonym."

"Lanie says he's not hypothetical. She said that Beckett told her he's real."

Ryan thought about it for 3.2 seconds and then declared, "Beckett with someone other than Castle? Nope."

"That's what she said!" Lanie protested.

"She's messing with you." Esposito countered.

"She wouldn't do that."

"Beckett?" Ryan laughed. "Of course she would. Remember what she did to me right after Christmas?"

"Yeah," Lanie told him, "but you're an easy mark. She wouldn't dare try any of that shit with me."

"Hey!" Ryan tried to look offended.

"Oh, shut up, both of you!" Esposito interrupted. "You're both right. Lanie, Beckett's probably playing you. There's no Dave, at least not another guy. It's all Castle." He looked at Ryan. "And you _are_ an easy mark."

"Hey, just you remember who Castle sent the alligator videos to!"

Esposito gave him a glare, because that was still a sore spot that Castle had enlisted Ryan's help and not his. But then Esposito's mind traveled back as he remembered the second video at the same time that Ryan did, and both partners pointed their fingers at each other.

"That video!" Ryan exclaimed.

"She was sitting on Castle's lap!" Esposito finished voicing the thought.

Lanie, somehow following the exchange, saw where they were going and she leaned her head in closer to the two of theirs. "She _was_ sitting on his lap! How did I forget that?"

"When I tried to give her some grief about that, she said it was just a temporary aberration or something like that. Yeah, right," Ryan remembered.

Esposito agreed with Ryan, "Yeah. She sat on his lap! We know what that means. Beckett sits on some good lookin' guy's lap, voluntarily? It can only mean one thing-she's got it bad."

Lanie pulled out her phone. "What are you doing?" Esposito asked her.

"Oh, _Miss 'I'm going to feed my best friend a line of bull' _said that I should text her if I need anything. So this girl," she said, pointing to herself, "who does NOT appreciate being messed with, is gonna send that little jokester a smackdown text like no other."

But just as she unlocked her phone, it started chiming, alerting her of an incoming text message. From Kate. She held up the phone for the guys to see, telling them "Ah, got a text from Kate. Let's see what our little fibber-girl has to say."

She opened the message and read "_See? Real, live Dave. Believe me now? Now stop worrying about my love life...just look at him and you can see it's pretty damn fine. Like he is._"

Then she scrolled down and saw the picture, and gasped. Espositio mumbled something in spanish that didn't sound like a nice word. And Ryan just said "oh, crap."

And the three of them sat there-at a loss for words-as they looked at the picture of their boss and friend, in a very sexy hot pink swimming suit, sitting on the lap of a dark-haired, tanned, gorgeous guy. She had her arms around him, and her head tilted toward his head, and they had big smiles on both of their faces. All of them could see that it was a much more intimate embrace than the one in the video they had just been discussing. And the fact that Beckett was in a knockout of a swimsuit, and the guy...Dave...was shirtless and apparently had a very nice upper body, from what they could see, was also not missed by the three.

"I bet he has washboard abs," Ryan said with a sneer.

"He probably spends a fortune at the dentist, with those teeth," Espositio noted.

"He's hot," was the simple observation that Lanie made. She followed that up with the obvious, "And she's cuddled up with him _in his lap_." She stood up a little bit and reached over to thump both of the guys on the head before sitting down again. "So according to what you just said," she said in an exasperated tone as she pointed an accusatory finger at Esposito, if she's sitting on his lap, especially like _that_," she held up the phone with her other hand, "then she must 'have it bad' for him, huh?"

Esposito just looked from her to the picture on the phone, then to Ryan, who shrugged his shoulders at him. "I got nothin'. Maybe she was more stressed out than any of us realized."

"Know what I think?" Ryan asked, capturing the gazes of the other two. "We need to talk to Castle."

"Yeah."

"But...let's call him after lunch. Then we can think about what we're going to say to him. Guy's been following Beckett so long that seeing her with toothy-washboard-ab man probably has him about ready to let that alligator just finish him off. We have to watch what we say."

Lanie stood up. "I'm goin' along with you guys. And you better take me somewhere that has something chocolate. If I can't have a drink after seeing this, then I'd better have some chocolate."

_**

* * *

**_

I tried not to make it too easy for them to believe the punking, at least right away. But yes, they will have to believe it, otherwise...oh, forget it. That's giving too much away. But the guys are detectives, so they're supposed to be at least a little bit skeptical. And Lanie...well, she's Lanie. And I tried to tie the alligator video in there too. Hope it works for you all!

_**Reviews? I'd love to know what you think.**_


	39. Chapter 39

_**One thing that I wanted to clarify: in the last chapter, I made mention that I thought this was now the longest Castle fic on the site. A few people pointed out one that has more chapters, and that part is totally true. I just wanted to clarify that my observations were strictly made from word count alone, and while there may be some that have more chapters, I believed I had surpassed the word count of the largest one I could find. That observation is in no way meant to be a slight against any of the other fics on this site at all...there are truly some wonderful writers here, and when I read their stuff, I'm in awe. I just go 'wow' and wish I could put words together that well. The observation was only me doing a little written happy dance because I'm still somewhat in shock (yes, broken record time) that I'm still writing this almost 3 months after starting it, and it's gotten so huge. But that's all because of all of you and your wonderful feedback, because until I started doing it, I would have never, ever thought I could write something like this. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you all! Without an audience, this would have gone nowhere.**_

_**And I've now had two people mention to me that my story has come up on some chat boards. I'm like, 'people are chatting with other people about this story? No way! And...why?' Very cool, but a little wild and definitely not expected. **_

_**Hope you enjoy this next installment. It's a lot of fluff and not much plot development, but I hope it's fun anyway. And I guess that for this chapter, I kind of blew it about moving things along faster. Oh, well, there's always another chapter.**_

_**Disclaimer: nope, still don't own any of these characters.**_

* * *

Lunch on the boat was a relaxing time for the two couples. It was nothing fancy, but it was good. Rick regaled Joelle and Dave with the story of the the hangman game on the plane ride, and how it morphed into a drinking game. Dave got a good laugh, and told Joelle they'd need to try that at the next party they had.

After they'd eaten and had been sitting around for a while chatting and sunning themselves, Rick caught sight of the little diving board off the back of the boat. He got up from where he was sitting by Kate, and, declaring that he wanted to cool off, gave her a quick kiss before bounding over to the diving board. He bounced a couple of times, and after stating "Watch this!" he did a big jump and cannonballed into the water. After he surfaced, he excitedly asked the people still on the boat, "So how was the splash? Did it get you wet?" Obviously, he was trying to live out the cannonball fantasy of every young boy-to hit the water just right so that an epic amount of water drenched those unlucky enough to be in the immediate vicinity.

"Nah, that was wimpy," Dave chided. "Let me show you how it's done." After a crestfallen look passed over his face at the lack of praise for his cannonball prowess, Rick swam out of the way as Dave took to the board. He bounced a few times and then went back to the beginning of the board. He rubbed his hands together and told everyone "Watch and learn," and then took a run, a bounce and launched himself into the air, curling his body up at the highest point and hitting the water with a mighty splash.

He surfaced and looked to the ladies. "Well?"

Kate looked at Joelle, and then she finally replied, "Sorry, Rick. He won that round."

Rick pointed at Dave and declared, "Rematch!"

And thus it started. The men (or boys, as Kate and Joelle thought was a more accurate description of them at this moment in time) were engaging in an all-out war of the water. Or actually, it was more of war of the flying water. Kate and Joelle were ordered to be judges. After a while when the simple splashing contest got to be too routine, the contest morphed into one which didn't just include the size of the splash, but then got to be about style points including height of the jump, take off from the board, and creativity over what was done in the air. Kate didn't know how they kept up with it, because she and Joelle were tired of watching their antics long before the guys seemed to be tired of performing them.

Finally, after several rounds of the next iteration of the contest-a follow the leader type of game-Kate had had enough. She looked at Joelle and asked softly, "Ready to see if the boys are all talk and no action? We could see if they'll put their money where their mouths are."

"I like the sound of this. Whatever you have planned, as long as it doesn't involve me catapulting off that thing, go for it."

Kate stood up. "Okay, boys. Now I'm the leader. You have to do what I do. Got it?"

"Oooo, this should be good," Dave chided.

"Come on, Kate, there's no way you can come up with anything as good as us. We don't want to humiliate you." Dave nodded, agreeing with Rick.

She casually walked out to the end of the board and did a few light jumps. "Okay, this will work. Here's the deal. You need to do what _I_ do. If either of you mess it up, Joelle and I get a date at the spa tomorrow. And no more cannonballs from you guys for the rest of the day."

Rick had a gleam in his eye. He'd always liked the betting, competitive side of Kate. "The spa we can do. No more cannonballs? That's going to be tough...I, for one, have just found my groove. But that's only if we aren't able to imitate you. And I think that you're really underestimating us. Right, Dave-o-rooni?"

"I got your back, Rick-meister. But tell us, Kate, what if we _do_ imitate your trick sufficiently? What do _we_ get?"

Even though Kate stared at Rick as she slowly and seductively licked her lips, she spoke to Dave. "Well, Dave, that's a good question. And I'm sure that Rick can start to figure out what his reward will be. But Joelle is in charge of any potential rewards for you." She hopped off the board, walked over to Rick and whispered something in his ear. His eyes got big and he squeaked 'okay'. She walked back to the board with a smug smile. "Gentlemen, is it a deal?"

"Deal," they replied in unison, although Rick's voice was still a little squeaky.

Kate walked to the end and bounced on the board a few more times before walking back to the start of the board. She took a deep breath, and then did a several step approach to the end of the board, jumped, and then propelled her body up and out over the water. She bent her head down by her knees as she pointed her toes. Her body, bent in half at her hips, flipped end over end one and one half times, and as she approached the water she straightened her body out with her arms in front of her, finishing her execution of a front one and one half dive in not perfect form, but definitely performed well enough to impress her audience.

She surfaced after the dive to find Joelle clapping for her and whistling, shouting "Bravo! Perfect tens!" But as she was treading water, she couldn't stifle a laugh and the expressions on the faces of the two men. Pure shock. They hadn't seen it coming.

"Well, Gentlemen?" she prompted.

Rick, still staring at her, somewhat slackjawed, said "I never expected it, but that was just...hot. Totally hot."

Dave just said "Oh, shit."

Kate climbed out and grabbed a towel. "It felt a little off to me, so you do have some leeway. I think I under-rotated just a bit. It's been a pretty long time since I've done that, and the board is not the greatest for that type of thing."

Rick walked over to her. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"A couple of summers on a dive team when I was a teenager. So," she continued, "who's going first?"

"He is," both of the guys said at the same time, pointing to each other.

Joelle spoke up. "Come on Dave, you go first. Man up." Dave shot his wife a scathing look but climbed up on the board.

"Here goes nothing," he muttered, and started his approach. The approach was okay, but he misjudged the takeoff. Instead of going up, he propelled his body straight out over the water, which resulted in him not having enough time to complete the rotation. He landed on his back, and because his feet were up over him trying to do the flip, he landed with a mighty splash and came up sputtering.

Joelle and Kate were laughing, and Rick looked a little worried. Good-naturedly, Dave held up a hand and said "That didn't go so well, but I'm fine."

"And I'll be fine tomorrow after my time at the spa," Joelle reminded him as she high-fived Kate.

They turned to Rick. "Your turn," the women said in unison.

Rick got up on the board and did a few practice bounces on the end of the board. "Quit stalling," Kate told him sternly. "You've been bouncing on that thing for the last hour. The last thing you need is more so-called practice."

Dave yelled to Rick, "Hey, man, make sure you get enough height. I think that was my downfall. No pun intended."

Rick decided to start from the end of the board and did several jumps to get himself higher in the air. When he took off, he did have more height than Dave. And he started flipping better. But then he must have not realized where he was, or where the water was, because before he was in a vertical dive position after the first full flip, he straightened out his body, which stopped the flipping motion. To straighten out your body too early is not a good thing, as Rick found out. Unfortunately for him, his body was parallel to the water when it stopped somersaulting, which resulted in him smacking the whole front of his body pretty much flat out, right on the top of the water like a belly flop. The 'crack' sound of his body hitting the calm ocean water was enough to make the others wince, amidst a chorus of "Owwww!" and "Ugh!" comments.

Kate ran to the ladder and eased herself into the water to swim out to him. By the time she got to him, he'd rolled over and was floating on his back with his fingers pinching his nose. "Man, that smarts!"

Kate touched his shoulder, alerting him to her presence in the water. "Are you okay?" she asked him, obviously concerned.

He looked at her concerned face, and then quickly reached one hand out, and put it on her head and pushed her under the water. She surfaced a few feet away and yelled "What was that for?"

"For making me get a self-inflicted saltwater enema of the nose. And sinuses. And whatever other empty cavities are up there."

"Do NOT make me say it..." she told him, referring to his comment about empty cavities in his head. "Anyway I had nothing to do with that."

"You made me do it."

"But I did _not_ make you do it like _that_. In fact, I don't think anyone will ever duplicate _that_ ever again. Too bad we didn't get a video of it."

Dave chimed in. "Don't worry, I did." He smiled and held up his phone.

Kate turned to Dave and smiled at him when she saw the phone. "Dave, have I told you lately what an amazing fake boyfriend you are?" Then, still treading water, she turned to Rick. "Come on, Greg Louganis, let's get dried off for a while and maybe you can let the saltwater drain out of your head."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Eventually, they did try their hands and deep sea fishing. The guys each caught a couple of nice fish, but decided to throw them back after taking pictures of them. Joelle thought it would be a good idea for Kate to pose for another picture with Dave when he caught one of his fish, in keeping with their story. Just for a little bit more strength to their story, Kate sent it to Ryan with a message of '_thanks for the idea!'_. The picture wasn't anything overly intimate; it just showed the supposed couple laughing together, Dave holding the fish and Kate behind him, pointing to the fish but laughingly trying not to touch it. Joelle then posed for one with Rick and his fish, in case they should need it later. And then the _real_ couples posed for pictures with their fish. "If you end up sending your friends another picture, just make sure you send the right one!" Joelle cautioned. "It could be disastrous to your plan otherwise."

All in all, it was a fun picture-taking session with the couples good-naturedly swapping places and fish, quite different than the previous time when Rick and Kate both ended up uncomfortable. Of course, it helped the comfort level with nobody needing to sit on anyone's lap (except for the fish, obviously).

They stayed out on the boat until late afternoon, when they collectively decided that they'd had quite their fill of sun and saltwater. Not one to renege on a bet, Rick had, from the boat, called the spa that he'd taken Kate to for her birthday and managed to get Kate and Joelle appointments for the next day.

After saying their goodbyes at the marina, Kate and Rick drove back to the house. Rick had started yawning loudly on the way, and Kate realized that she was kind of tired too. At her first yawn, he looked at her sideways while he drove. "Are you really tired too or are you just trying to make me feel like a geriatric patient in need of his afternoon nap?"

She shot him her own sideways look. "As much as the thought of you and your cane shuffling around a nursing home in slippers and a gray cardigan is an amusing mental image, I'm finding that after hearing you yawn, it made me realize that I could probably use a nap too. It seems that I'm not getting a lot of sleep some nights, while I seem to be having an increase in my...nocturnal activity levels."

"And that's entirely my fault?"

"Well, I can't blame it on anyone else, can I?"

"I don't suppose you can," he replied with a smug smile. "And I guess I like it that way."

"Me, too," she told him as she reached over to grab his hand.

Once inside the house, Kate headed upstairs to take a quick shower to wash the saltwater out of her hair, and Rick plopped down on the couch. He was starting to doze off when the sound of his phone jolted him back to wakefulness. He was surprised to find a picture of Esposito on the screen, indicating he was the caller. What could Esposito want? Probably something to do with the Kate and Dave pictures, no doubt.

"Hey, Esposito!" he answered. "How's it going? Need some help with a case?" he laughed.

"Hey, Castle. How's things in Florida?"

Rick noticed that Esposito's voice sounded different. Strained, almost, like he would love to be doing anything else than calling Castle.

"Things are great. The weather's been really nice, except for a big storm last night."

"Yeah...well. Uh, how's Beckett?"

"She's good. She was kind of uptight at first, but now she's really letting loose and embracing the whole concept of a vacation." Rick had a good idea of what Esposito was calling about, given the last communication that Rick and Kate had with the contingent back home and the fact that he was already asking about Kate.

"Listen...Castle..." he stuttered. He didn't know how to begin. "Look, Beckett sent a picture to Lanie. A picture of her with some guy. And then she sent one to Ryan with the guy and the fish. Geez, Dude! What is going _on_ down there?"

Rick stretched out on the couch and mentally prepared his answer, hoping that his answer could be half as good as Kate's impromptu performance with Lanie earlier that day. He took a deep breath, and began, "Oh, yeah..."

_**

* * *

**_

Sorry to leave you hanging, but I needed to save some for the next chapter. And speaking of the next chapter, I'm on somewhat of a roll and I've been working ahead a bit so it shouldn't be too long before it's up.

_**I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for the wonderful reviews for the last chapter. I still continue to be amazed. Each and every one was appreciated, and while I didn't get to respond to all of them, I still value them greatly and thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback.**_

_**Thanks bunches!**_

_**And...Knockdown...wow. Intense from the first minute. Great episode! I love all of the subtle little nuances to how they're getting closer over these last several episodes. Wish they would have dragged out the ambulance scene just a little longer. The lingering gazes were wonderful. And I think they did the kiss just right...unexpected and unplanned, but for a reason (the cover), but they still lost themselves in it just a little bit. Can't wait for the next episode, but first...the Super Bowl! **_


	40. Chapter 40

_**You guys are awesome! Really! So as a reward for your awesomeness, and because I left you with a little cliffhanger last time, here's the next chapter. We're still moving slowly, and I'm finding it hard to make good on my promise to move things along more quickly. But I'll keep trying.**_

_**Disclaimer: the usual. I don't own anyone.**_

_

* * *

_

"Listen...Castle..." he stuttered. He didn't know how to begin. "Look, Beckett sent a picture to Lanie. A picture of her with some guy. And then she sent one to Ryan with the guy and the fish. Geez, Dude! What is going

on_ down there?"_

Rick stretched out on the couch and mentally prepared his answer, hoping that his answer could be half as good as Kate's impromptu performance with Lanie earlier that day. He took a deep breath, and began, "Oh, yeah...that was probably Dave. Nice guy." Rick didn't want to say too much until he saw how far Espo was going to go with his line of questioning.

"Want us to get rid of him for you? Me and Ryan, we could come down there and have a talk with him, you know?"

"Huh?"

"Come on, Castle! Cut the crap, man. What's happening down there?"

"We're all...having a vacation?"

"But why is Beckett with another guy? Isn't she supposed to be with _you_? Isn't that why you took her down there...so you guys could finally hook up and get hot and heavy?"

Rick was somewhat dumbfounded. That's what they'd thought? That he was taking her on this vacation to for the singular purpose of seducing her? Beckett? Like she was some brainless bimbo who would fall for that? He was almost outraged on her behalf. Esposito should know her better than that.

"Wha...no! No! Absolutely not!"

"Come on! Like I said before, cut the crap. We all know you have a thing for her."

Rick had to tread carefully here. "Esposito, look. She's one of the best people I know. She's my friend, like all of you are my friends too."

"Man, if you looked at all your 'friends' the way you look at her, I, being one of those friends, would be seriously creeped out."

"She's a special person, with a wonderful heart. And I brought her down here, honestly, for no other reason than to force her to take a break and not run herself ragged. And for all that she's given me for the books, I wanted to try to pay her back somehow. That's all. Scout's honor."

"Come on, bro. You expect me to believe that? You? With Beckett? Alone?"

"Esposito...geez. You have to believe it. Because it's _true_. Think about Beckett and how she is. Do you really think she would have stayed this long if I'd done the least little thing to indicate to her that I'd kidnapped her with the expectation she be my love slave for two weeks? You all told me not to do anything stupid when we came down here. You don't think _that_ would have been stupid? My God...there would be no way she would still be here. Hell, _I_ wouldn't still be here. Knowing Beckett, if I'd tried anything remotely like what you're suggesting, right now I'd be laying in intensive care from being on the wrong end of an old-fashioned, Beckett-style butt-kicking like no other."

He heard Esposito let out a slow breath on the other side of the phone call, telling him that Esposito knew he had a point. "So what about the guy? Dave?"

"She met him. They connected. She's happy," Rick said succintly, still wary about saying too much. At least everything he had said up until now had been the pure, unvarnished truth. He truly did _not_ bring Kate down here to seduce her, and had in fact tried to shy away from her own overtures at first.

"Are you happy, seeing her with him?"

Rick chose his words carefully. "It takes some getting used to, partially because none of us are really used to seeing her like that, with a guy. You know." Rick was mentally patting himself on the back; those comments were also 100% true. It certainly did take some getting used to when they posed for the first picture, but he was okay with it by the time they got to the fish pictures. He continued, "But he really is a nice guy. We get along well."

"You and him? Riiiiight."

"Really. He's a good guy." Just then, Rick got an idea, and along with it came the gleam in his eye. "Okay, want to know something? You know 'Universal Domination'?"

"Dude...that's the game that you got me and Ryan hooked on. Duh. Of course we know it. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Dave. Got. Me. Version. Four." He said the words with calculated intensity on each syllable because he know how Esposito would react.

He heard Esposito take a breath. "Castle, that is a rotten trick to play. Everyone knows that UniDom 4 isn't released yet, won't be for at least a month."

"But alas, Dave knows the developers. Got me a beta copy." He let that sink in, before he added in an excited voice, "And man, is it cool! It has these glowing-"

"Castle! I don't want to hear it," Esposito interrupted. "That is so not cool. You're at a beach house _and_ you get a beta copy of UniDom 4?"

"I guess I'm charmed," Rick said smugly.

"Time to share some of that charm, dude. It's not fair you get the lion's share."

"Don't worry, you and Ryan are still getting your box seats for helping me get Beckett down here."

After a longish pause, Esposito tried again. "Really, Castle, are _you_ okay with this boyfriend thing? I mean, Beckett, with a new guy, again?"

He sighed. "Like I said, it takes some getting used to. But I think she's happy...she really seems happy. And yeah, I know people have been saying forever that we should get together, made bets on it...all of that stuff. I'm not dumb or blind, and neither is Beckett. So..." He trailed off, thinking for a few seconds about how he really _would_ feel if Kate had hooked up with another guy. He'd feel awful. Gut-wrenching, depressively terrible. But if it made her happy, he wouldn't stand in her way; he wouldn't do anything to impede her happiness, if that's what she wanted. When he continued, his voice held a melancholy note to it. "...look, things happen for a reason. And you can't force stuff to happen. So I guess... if anything else is meant to be, it'll happen that way. And she could have picked a worse guy."

Esposito was silent for a couple of seconds on the other side of the conversation. "Dude, I don't know what to say. I just always thought you two would end up together. Even after how you left last summer."

"Yeah, I know that was stupid," he acknowledged quietly. "And really bad timing all around."

"Wait...you know? The whole story?"

"Yeah, I know. We talked."

He could hear Esposito let out a breath. "Castle, just watch out for her, okay? We don't know this guy. She doesn't need to be hurt again. And you...never mind. I've said enough."

Rick decided this conversation was getting a little too heavy, so he tried to lighten up the mood a little bit. "Hey, Espo, it's good. I'm on it. But Dave really is a cool guy, and she's only been with him like what? A week? And she's on vacation. Who knows how things will turn out once they get back home? Maybe he'll just be a vacation fling. Either way, she's having a good time now, and that's what matters, right?"

"Yeah. You just make sure that guy doesn't do anything to Beckett. And the offer still stands...we can still come down and have a little talk with him. All you have to do is say the word. Oh, and you'd probably have to buy the plane tickets too," he finished with a chuckle.

They chatted for a few more minutes, during which time Rick had to promise to let Espo play Universal Domination 4 when they were back. But at least the conversation had finished on a lighter note. After they said their goodbyes, Rick plugged in his phone to charge and then trudged upstairs to the bedroom, where he found Kate freshly showered, in a tank top and yoga pants.

He collapsed on the bed. "Now I really do need a nap. I just had a somewhat intense phone call."

She looked at him quizzically. "From who?"

"Oh, just guess. One of the three stooges. The dark, brooding, hispanic one."

"Esposito called you? Why?" Then she had a flash of realization. She walked over and stood by him on the bed as she finger-combed her wet hair. "Oh, yeah, the picture. But why did Esposito call? And why you?"

He reached up and grabbed her free hand, tugging her down onto the bed with him. He was on his side, and she was on her back now, but with her head turned toward him on the same king-sized pillow. "Esposito is worried. Maybe they wanted him to try with me since Lanie couldn't get information-at least the information she wanted to hear-out of you. He wanted to know all about Dave. But first he wanted to know how all of this happened, since he pretty much said that they all thought I was kidnapping you for the sole purpose of bringing you down here to have my wild way with you for two weeks."

"What? But we weren't..." she exclaimed, trying to sit up.

He clamped an arm over her body and held her tightly, making her ease back down into the pillow. And since his arm was around her, he took advantage of it and pulled her a little closer to him. "Easy there, tiger. He kind of surprised me with that one too. Never, ever when planning this did I make the slightest mention of you being my sex slave, although the thought is kind of interesting..." he trailed off and then shook himself back to reality when he felt her glare on him. "Hey, you know I didn't do anything like that. I even told you...you...me...it was always more fantasy than reality, even for me. Well, until last week. I just wanted you to relax, have a good time. I just wanted to do this for you. But apparently they got it in their heads that getting you horizontal between the sheets was my primary goal. I was actually feeling a little irked about it."

"I don't know why...you always did like to cultivate that reputation," she told him dryly.

"No, not that. I expect that. I know what my reputation is...was. But I was irked for you. How could they think that _you_ would put up with that, from anyone? I mean, I know they make comments...we all do. But to think that you would just blindly go along with...that? You?"

"What, I'm some sort of prude now?"

"No! But you're not easy, and you're much more than some little airheaded bimbo who would just go along with something like that. You'd kick my butt to the curb so fast...and I told him that."

"So you defended my reputation."

"I tried. Um, why don't you seem very mad?"

"Because it's kind of funny. It IS what ended up happening, after all, although it did take us a week to get to that point. But they don't know that it's happening. So we do get the last laugh."

"Maybe..." His voice held a odd tone to it.

"What's wrong?"

"Esposito...he just seemed so...I don't know. Concerned, I guess. He kept asking me about Dave and if he was going to hurt you, and then he kept asking me how I was."

"How you were?" She was puzzled.

"Yeah. Like how it felt for me to see you with him. Like he thought you were breaking my heart by going off with Dave."

His voice still had that strange tone to it. "Rick, I can tell something's bugging you. What is it?"

He sighed, and then opened his mouth to say something, before closing it again. He leaned his face forward and gave her a quick kiss, and then tried again. "As we were talking and he kept bringing it up, my imagination ran away with me and I thought for a few seconds how it would feel if the Dave thing were true. If you were with someone else and I had to just sit back and watch. And I didn't like it at all."

"But it's not true. At all. I wouldn't do that to you."

"But you..." he trailed off, not wanting to finish.

"But I what?" she questioned. When he didn't respond, she filled in the blanks herself. "'But I did it once'...is that what you were going to say? Last summer?" He nodded. "But you did too."

"I know."

"But we were both different then. And a lot less honest about everything. Now look at us. We're both laying here together in a bed. It's the same bed that we've shared for several days. You and me. I can look at you now and tell you with no hesitation and complete sincerity that I love you. That's a lot different than it was."

He hugged her a little closer, and she closed her eyes as he scooted his head closer and rested his forehead against hers. "Damn my imagination sometimes."

She gave him a quick laugh. "Well sometimes it's useful. Just try not to imagine bad stuff when it comes to us, okay? I sometimes think we've been jinxed enough. Don't jinx us anymore."

"Deal."

"So what else did Esposito say?"

He pulled his head away from hers a bit so he could look at her. "Just a lot about Dave. Wanting to know if you were okay. Wanting to know if I was okay. But you'd be proud of me...I never actually lied to him about anything. Well, I mean, the Dave thing, of course, because that's a given, but I didn't lie about why I brought you down here, or about how I felt when I saw you together posing for that picture."

"Considering your reaction to us posing for that picture, how did you manage to talk yourself out of that one without lying?" She affected a deeper voice like she was imitating him. "'_Oh, sure, Esposito, I got all jealous when I saw Kate with Dave, but no, we're not involved.' _I'm sure that really convinced him."

"Ha ha. No, he asked how it felt, me seeing you with him, and I just told him it took some getting used to because we don't normally see you with all of your guys. All perfectly true. And plausible."

She rolled her eyes. "Plausible, yes, you're right. Bu really, Rick, _guys_? In the plural? You make it sound like I keep a half dozen hunky hotties on speed dial so I can have one ready to satisfy my womanly urges at any time of the day or night."

The look on his face was priceless as what she said-and the images it evoked-sunk into his brain. Then he gave her a cocky grin. "That's fine...I'll just get five more numbers, and forward them all to my phone so I'm the only hunky hottie that will ever ever come a-callin'."

"No need for the other phones. I already have you on speed dial. You'd be the only one."

"Good to know. Now are you still tired, because I am. So can we get to that nap now?"

"Thought you'd never ask," she said, and yawned as much as from being tired as from the suggestion of a nap. She snuggled in closer to him and wrapped her arm around the one of his that was still securely encircling her waist. He placed a quick kiss on her cheek. "Sweet dreams, Rick," she told him softly.

"Oh, I have no doubt," he replied as he laid his face next to hers and right along with her, lost himself in sleep.

* * *

_**Side note: as I was writing this chapter, Seinfeld was on TV and it was the shrinkage episode! How funny (if you remember several chapters ago when I referenced that episode)!**_

_**So...give me your opinions: do you think we need some more conversations with Lanie, Espo and Ryan about this, or have I beaten that horse to death? I've already said that they won't figure it out yet, so I'm not sure if we need any more with them obsessing about it.**_

_**Thoughts? About anything (well, anything related to the story, that is)?**_

_**And...I have to say, RIP, Challenger astronauts. 25 years ago today. Wow. It was such a tragedy.**_

_**Thanks again!**_


	41. Chapter 41

_**Ready for another chapter? **_

_**This chapter evolved in a way that was quite different than I'd planned, but I think it worked out in the end. It was a tough road to travel for a while. Unfortunately for those of you who think I'm moving too slow, I still haven't been able to board the 'move it along faster' train yet. I can only hope that even though we are still moving a little slowly, it's still keeping your interest. As much as I want to move a little bit faster, I realized that I have to get to a certain point in the story before I'll be able to do that. But not too much longer though, I think.**_

_**I've officially hit 250 story alerts. Wow! Welcome to all of the new readers, and many thanks to those of you who have been continuing to follow this story. **_

_**And I wanted to say thank you to Davic526 for the nice note. I tried to respond, but your profile doesn't accept private messages. And thank you once again, from the bottom of my heart, to all of the faithful readers and reviewers. You know who you are! I do appreciate you!**_

_**Disclaimer: Any characters or products mentioned are not mine and I lay no claim to them.**_

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"Rick, you're drooling on my shoulder."

As she said the words, Kate shook his arm again, the arm that still had her firmly anchored against his body. She didn't know how he could manage to still hold her tightly when he was asleep, but he did.

She'd drifted slowly awake after their nap, noting, once again, the contentment that she felt waking up beside him. But then she registered their positions, more specifically that his head was curled into the space between her neck and shoulder. Which wouldn't have been bad at all, but with his cheek resting on her shoulder, and with him obviously sleeping very deeply, she could feel that his mouth had fallen open and her shoulder was wet with his drool.

Great. Ew.

After she shook him for the second time, she could finally feel him stir against her. As he did that, he tried to bury his face against her a little more, moving his jaw a little closer to her collarbone, like he was going to nuzzle her neck. And thus evoking another chorus of the 'Great. Ew.' commentary in Kate's head as she realized that he was going to spread the drool. He could spread the love to her...okay. Spread the drool? No way.

She put her hand against his forehead and tried to push him back as she looked at his face. His eyes blinked open as he sleepily registered her face.

"Huh? Wassyadoin?" he asked as he raised his head a little bit, and then yawned. Then he realized that his cheek was wet and he wiped it off with his hand.

"That," she told him. "You drooled on me when we were sleeping."

"Oh." He raised the hem of his t-shirt up and wiped off her shoulder. "Sorry."

"I guess you are like Hooch." At his quizzical look, she elaborated. "When you were telling me once that we made a good team...like Turner and Hooch, and I told you that you reminded me of Hooch? Well, never more than right now when you shared your drool with me."

"I'll share my drool with you anytime," he told her with a perfectly straight face. "And you should know that I only drool on the people that mean the most to me."

She wrinkled her nose and gave him a pat on his shoulder. "Uh, no to the sharing. And thanks for the sentiment...I think." She looked around the room then, registering that it was a lot darker now. She glanced at the bedside alarm clock. "Rick, it's almost nine o'clock! So much for a little nap!"

"Huh." He ran a hand through his hair as he sat up, and then yawned again. "Well. Yeah, I guess the clock does say that, doesn't it?"

"Uh huh. As if my sleep habits aren't messed up enough! Now I probably won't be able to get to sleep until three a.m."

"If you can't think of anything to do, I'm sure I could come up with something to do until you feel sleepy again," he told her, waggling his eyebrows and giving her a comical leer.

When he looked so goofy like that, she couldn't help but smile at him. She gave him a lighthearted whack on his shoulder. "Down boy. I need food. We slept through dinner."

"I was talking about dinner," he told her, trying to sound innocent.

"Sure." She punctuated that with a mini eye-roll.

He leaned forward so his face was right next to hers. "I know exactly what you need," he said in a low voice, still without a hint of a smile on it, but definitely with a seductive tone injected into it. "I know that you can feel the need in the pit of your stomach. That need will consume you, it will build in you and it will eat away at you," he told her as his lips gave the corner of her mouth the most brief and lightest of kisses, "until you can't control your actions anymore. You'll need to have relief. And I know that what you need, right now, above all else," he leaned into her ear as he paused for effect, and then said tantalizingly slowly, "is a nice, really, really hot,"-he pulled back to look in her eyes as he precisely enunciated each syllable-

"Greasy pizza," he finished quickly as he sat up perfectly straight and stared at her, not grinning (yet), although she could spot the look of amusement in his eyes a mile away.

She was the first one to smile. "You love to spin your stories, don't you?"

"Always. But can you deny that a nice, greasy pizza would taste heavenly right now?"

She contemplated his question, looking up in the air and biting her cheek lightly. "I don't know how you do it, but yeah, a greasy, gooey, cheesy pizza would tast pretty damn good right now."

"Shall we?" he asked, holding out his arm.

"Sure, but you need to change first," she ordered, indicating that he was still wearing his clothes from the boat that afternoon.

"Yeah...right. But shower first, I think."

"Make it quick. And I'll try to do something with my hair...it's..." she caught sight of herself in the mirror across the room, "Ugh! Major bed head. I better fix this or you won't want to be seen with me," she joked.

He grabbed her arm before she started across the room. She looked back at him and found he was, again, wearing a serious expression, but he didn't have that glint of humor in his eyes anymore. "That would never happen. And you're always beautiful."

She stared at him, not knowing what to say when he got all serious and uttered compliments like that. So they just looked at each other for a few more long moments. The silence didn't bother her in an official setting, but when Rick, who was the antithesis of serious, turned silent and introspective, it got her a little out of sorts. Especially when all of that intensity was directed at her. When she could stand the silence between them no more, she said, "Well, yeah. Good. And thanks, but I think you might need glasses. And now, I'm going go accompany you to the bathroom so I can wash the drool residue from my shoulder before I change."

The last comment broke his intensity, and he grinned. "Want me to help you wash your shoulder? Or anything else?"

"Not this time, or we're never going to get that pizza."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They sat at a small table across from each other, with a thin-crust double pepperoni, double cheese pizza sitting between them. The place wasn't large, but because of the later hour, they hadn't had to wait for a table. The pizza was indeed very gooey and cheesy, and Kate looked at it hungrily while Rick plated a couple of slices. Before she took her first bite though, she looked around to ensure that nobody was watching them, and then she raised up and leaned over the small table to give Rick a quick kiss. He returned the kiss as much as he could, being surprised as he was by the suddenness of it. She settled back into her chair and picked up her slice, taking a bite as she watched him still just sit there, obviously somewhat stunned by her impromptu public act of affection.

"Not that I'm complaining, but what was that for?"

She finished chewing her first bite and swallowed it. "Man, is that good! Eat some. And that was just because I felt like it, to say thanks. You somehow knew this would be perfect. And it is."

He grinned the cocky grin of his as he picked up his slice. "See? I do know you. Sometimes, I would dare say that I know what you're going to do before you do."

"Please don't tell me that you're pulling out that psychic thing again? That it's in your genes or something?

"You scoff. But I think I know you better than you know yourself."

"Riiiiiight. You are full of yourself, aren't you? You do realize that we're talking about pizza, don't you? Not my innermost thoughts, hopes or dreams."

"Come on! Pizza or dreams, who cares? Some people do dream about pizza, you know, so they could be one in the same. But anyway, I do know you well. I've been studying you for a couple of years, after all. I still do. I _like_ to know everything about you. I know your habits, your quirks. I know how you think."

"Sometimes..." she said mysteriously as she took another bite.

"What's that supposed to mean?" His face lost the smile as he waited for her to explain.

"It means yes, you know me pretty well, but I have to have some mystery, don't I? I mean, if you knew absolutely everything about me, it would be boring. I would bore you."

"_You,_ bore me?" he asked, his mouth falling open. She reached over the pizza and lifted his chin back up. He swallowed quickly and declared "Never," with a shake of his head.

"That's only because I try to keep you guessing. You can _know_ me, the essence of me, shall we say, without knowing absolutely everything about me. I know it started out with me as your research project and you tried to get into my head as much as possible. And I'll admit that you do read me pretty well. Or at least you do now. But research will only get you so far. And I'm not two-dimensional, like Nikki. I evolve."

"I know you're not two-dimensional. You're very three-dimensional. I should know..." he trailed off, waggling his eyebrows.

"Yes, you do know that, quite well as of late," she agreed. "But sometimes when you get on these tangents, you sound like you expect to be able to read my mind or something. Like you won't stop until you figure out my innermost thoughts. But Rick, honey that's really creepy," she told him in a sweet voice, like she was letting him down gently. Then she tried to explain it more in terms he could understand, to make her point. "I mean, really; how could I even get you a birthday present or something like that?"

"You'd get me a birthday present? Really?" he said, sounding so excited, yet so shocked that it was sweetly touching.

Apparently she made her point _too_ well, where he lost the intent of the comment. "Focus, Rick," she told him, but then smiled to take the abruptness out of her words before she answered the rest of the question. "Even though the thought is still somewhat foreign to me, we're in a relationship now, aren't we?" He nodded eagerly. "Well, typically people in relationships give their significant others birthday presents. But that's beside the point. How much fun would it be for you if I couldn't even surprise you on your birthday?"

He pursed his lips, as if thinking about what she said. "Fine, I _might _concede that you have somewhat of a point, because yes, absolutely no surprises would be no fun. But," he leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin, "just what might you surprise me with for my birthday?"

She looked at him, and then she shook her head as she rolled her eyes. "Really, Rick. Did you forget to take your ADD pill today?" She paused only a second, and then leaned closer and lowered her voice. "Before we drop this conversation, because it seems like it's going off on a tangent really fast, just think about two things before you say that you know me so well: the beach," she told him, holding up one finger, "and the whipped cream," she added, holding up the second finger to count out the two events. "Because if you think you want know me that well that you know what I'm thinking before I do, then theoretically, you would have been able to predict that those two little interludes would be happening. And wasn't the surprise just absolutely one of the best parts? Huh? Because if not, then maybe next time when you bring me my morning coffee, should I just say to you, '_Gee, honey, I think we'll have a whipped cream orgy on Esposito's desk tonight after he goes home. Sound okay to you?' _And let you think about something like THAT all day. Would that work for you?"

She took delight in the reaction that her words had evoked in him: he sat across from her in what looked like a dumbfounded stupor, his mouth having fallen open as she was sure he was imagining, in vivid color and surround sound, teaming up with her and several bottles of whipped cream to defile Esposito's desk in such a creative and utterly enticing manner. Man, she loved shocking him. And because his mouth was still open, she took the remainder of her slice of pizza and shoved it in his open mouth. "There. Chew on _that_ for a while."

He did. And he was strangely quiet for the rest of the time that it took them to finish their pizza. But their eyes were locked on each other for most of that time, and there was an undercurrent to the looks that passed between them, one that Kate couldn't quite put her finger on. She was, of course, used to Rick watching her. For years, he'd watched her, tried to analyze her. She hadn't noticed it so much during the last several days, since they'd gotten together and had become intimate. But these looks from him were different; there were so many nuances of the expressions that crossed his face. Sometimes he looked like he was amused, other times he looked worried, and yet other times-and these were the hardest ones for which to maintain eye contact-he looked aroused. Because that look that he gave her when he was hungry for her...it made her hungry for him right back.

Eventually they finished the pizza and got the leftovers boxed. Finally, when they were leaving, Rick spoke again. He took her hand as they walked to the car, intertwining his fingers with hers. "Kate?" he asked.

"Yes?"

"Feel free to surprise me anytime."

"And you'll stop assuming that you're the other half of my brain?"

"Yes." They'd reached the car, and he stopped walking and after setting the pizza box down on the car, pulled her around to face him. "I'll settle for being the other half of your heart instead."

With the look in his eyes, and the softly spoken words, she had one of those rare moments where she just simply...melted. She felt like her insides were like the cheese that had been on the pizza...mushy and gooey. Despite his choice of words, she strongly suspected that he didn't consider it 'settling' at all; she suspected that was the big prize for him. He was still staring at her with an expectant, hopeful intensity, and she could guess what he was feeling, because she often felt the same way in these very beginning stages of their relationship. And she knew he was having a moment of uncertainty about them, their relationship, her feelings for him. She reached up and touched his cheek with her other hand that wasn't still clasped with his.

"You have that already. My half and your half...I think they're pretty much glued together."

At her declaration, he leaned back against the car and nodded, as she lowered her hand and snaked it lightly down his torso, leaving it to rest on his waist. But then he tilted his head to the side in contemplation, and pursed his lips before he spoke. "Glue stick or Gorilla Glue? Because glue sticks last for a little while but then they dry up and crack and peel apart. But Gorilla Glue? That stuff is awesome. You use that on something, and it's never coming apart again. Stuck together forever. There's no way it-"

"Gorilla," she interrupted softly, but it was loud enough for him to hear it and abruptly cease his monologue on the merits of Gorilla Glue. "Definitely gorilla." She punctuated her last statement with a small smile, which, after her words had sunk in for a couple of seconds, elicited a similar smile from him.

"Ooo ooo ah ah," he told her then, doing a bad gorilla impression. She rolled her eyes and he pulled her closer to kiss her forehead. But then, touching his forehead to hers, he clarified, "That's how gorillas say 'I love you', in case you didn't know." He kissed her lips lightly and then fully pulled her to him, and she returned the embrace by wrapping her arms around him and putting her head in one of her new favorite places, in between his neck and his shoulder. She took a deep breath, breathing in the scent of him.

They stood and swayed very gently in the night breeze, wrapped around each other. And although it was muffled a little bit against his chest, he heard her response and it made that feeling of contentment that only Kate could bring wash over him.

"Ooo ooo ah ah."

_**

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I had some problems with this chapter, but I think it finally all came together at the end. Hope you all think so too.

_**Thoughts? Reviews are always greatly appreciated. With so many people following the story, I'd really love to hear from you! It's really easy!**_


	42. Chapter 42

_**OK, Restless Goddess, you'd better sit down before you read this because you will not believe one of my lines in here. I already had it written when I read your review for Chapter 41, and I started giggling like a lunatic. **_

_**Sorry this chapter has been so long in coming; I got an idea in my head for another fic (Blizzard) so I started writing that. It was supposed to be a quick little one-shot, but then it morphed into a two-shot, and now from the response I'm getting, it appears that it will be going on for a bit longer. So since I'm double dipping on my fanfics, I thank you in advance for being patient with me.**_

_**Disclaimer: The usual...don't own anyone.**_

_**Without further ado...chapter forty two...(hey, that rhymes!)...**_

* * *

"Oh, my God," Kate said when she could finally manage to do more than pant and wheeze. She and Rick were sprawled, nearly naked, on the floor of the living room, looking up at the stairs-and the railing that enclosed them-which had just been put to use in such an inventive and wonderfully maddening way. Who would have dreamed that a few mentions of gorillas during the latter part of the evening would result in a mind-blowing jungle-themed interlude in their living room as soon as they were home? Or rather, an interlude somewhat above their living room? Thank goodness the stairway was open with what was apparently a very strong railing with equally strong metal spindles going from the steps up to said railing. Because, heaven knew that those spindles had just gotten a workout unlike any the architect had probably intended when designing the house.

"I never knew...how did you...the way you were hanging...oh, God," Rick stuttered, trying to voice all of the thoughts that were running through his head right now, but unable to coherently finish even one.

"I wasn't sure I was going to be able to keep holding on, not when you started..."

"But oh, man, you held on." He gulped. "And it was..."

"Yeah," she moaned, remembering. "But your tarzan call does need work."

"I'll even offer to go to a voice coach for it if you promise we can try that again sometime. But after I recover, please."

"We only have a few more days here, Rick."

"Kate." She turned her head to look at him, noting the smirk on his face. "Think about my loft at home, specifically the setup of my stairs to the second floor."

Although she hadn't been there a lot, she did manage to recall it in her mind, and she could instantly see the possibilities. And felt exhausted but aroused at just the thought of it. But then she thought of something else. "Forget it, Rick. You live with your mother and daughter! Are you willing to potentially scar that girl for life if she were to accidentally witness even a fraction of that? There is no way I would risk anyone walking in on anything like we just did."

"I'll ship them off to Europe or hell, anywhere in the galaxy if we can do _that _again sometime." He leaned over to kiss her shoulder. "You are amazing."

"You're not so bad yourself, Writer Monkey." But as soon as she said it, she broke out in fits of laughter that eventually had tears rolling down her face and had her rolling over onto Rick and lightly slapping his chest.

He loved seeing Kate like this: free, uninhibited, and genuinely happy and mirthful. Although he wished he had a clue as to the cause of her sudden mirth. "Uh, Kate? What's so funny?"

Kate tried to calm herself enough to talk. "Gorilla...monkey...writer monkey. Oh, God Rick, I just had hot monkey sex with our resident Writer Monkey! Real _monkey sex_! That is just too much!" And she collapsed in laughter again. Rick blinked a few times and then joined her in the laughter, thinking that he must really be exhausted if he needed her to explain it to him. He usually wasn't off his game this badly.

"When they gave me that name, I never would have survived all of these years if I'd had even a small premonition of what we just did."

"Good thing you're not psychic then, huh?" she managed to throw at him, recovered enough from her laughter to actually talk again.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Somehow they managed to make it upstairs a short while later, although the movements required to climb the stairs (which had been so creatively used just a short while before) and propel themselves to the bedroom were performed by decidedly weaker muscles. They barely got the blankets pulled back before they both collapsed on the bed.

"God, I am going to be so sore tomorrow," Kate told Rick, as she sprawled on her side of the bed. "But at the risk of inflating your ego more, I will say 'damn, but it was worth it.'" She turned her head on the pillow to look at Rick.

He was already looking at her, the cocky grin firmly in place, but at least it was a tired looking cocky grin. "You're welcome."

He could see her roll her eyes. "I knew it," she said to no one in particular. "Now he's probably going to levitate above the bed because his ego swelled so much."

"Hey! I didn't say anything. It's obvious that you enjoyed our little...adventure. And I'll have you know that I very much enjoyed it too. So thank _you_."

"Anytime," she answered, somewhat automatically. But then she changed her mind and wisely clarified, "No, not ANYTIME. Scratch that. Because I know that will come back to haunt me and you'll think you can goad me into having a nooner sometime at your loft, and then _of course_ Alexis will have a day when she gets out of school early and walks in on us, so no. thank. you. That would be...I can't tell you how awful and embarrassing that would be."

"I already told you, I'll send them on a vacation. Really. I can do it," he told her eagerly.

"No, how about if we just be _adults_ and restrain ourselves. Huh?"

"Uh, Kate? I really don't know if that's possible, for me anyway. You just, uh...well...oh, crap, when I'm around you I can't keep my hands off of you. And now, with this," he raised his hand and gesticulated randomly, "I think it'll be even worse. You have to stop doing this to me!"

"Doing what?" she asked innocently, as she rolled toward him and trailed her fingertips lightly down his chest.

"Good God, woman, do you know how long it's going to take me to recover after our re-enactment of the Jungle Book down there?"

"The spirit is willing but the body is weak?" she laughed, rolling back over to her side of the bed.

"Put a couple of adjectives of the 'extremely' variety in front of 'spirit' and 'body' and you've just about got it. But there's no reason that you have to be way over there, no matter how tired I am."

"But the bed is so big," she reasoned. "It would be wasteful if we didn't use the whole bed, wouldn't it?"

"We'll use the whole bed some other time, for something other than sleeping. Now, I repeat, get over here." She grabbed the blankets as she scooted closer to him, settling herself with her head on his shoulder.

"Good?" she asked.

He wrapped his arm around her. "Excellent."

And they slept.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

In the early morning light, he drifted awake to find Kate curled into his chest, sleeping peacefully. Their legs were entwined, and he had apparently turned toward her a little more in his sleep because his other arm was now draped over her and was holding her close. Over his life, he'd dated a lot of women, had slept with a lot of women, and had even married two of them. But now that he and Kate were together, even though they hadn't been _together_ in that way for very long, it was different somehow. His feelings were different...more intense but at the same time more tender. He never tired of being around her during the day, of watching her, talking with her, seeing her laugh and even watching her get annoyed with him. Of course he was very used to doing that; he'd been doing that part for years. But now, now that he had her with him at night...during the nighttime hours, it seemed that he couldn't hold her close enough, or long enough. It was a rare form of contentment that he felt, and he hoped more than anything that it it wouldn't fade as the newness of the relationship faded. Because it was special, as she was.

Just then, the beautiful object of his thoughts stirred in her sleep, shifting closer to him, if that was possible, but also shifting further up on the bed so her head was right next to his on the pillow. Even though she didn't open her eyes, she reached her head forward and with perfect aim, touched her lips to his in a soft kiss. "G' morning," she told him sleepily, yawning.

He returned the kiss. "Good morning to you," he told her. "Sleep well?"

"Like a log." She yawned again against his neck.

"I think we're a little bit like the mangrove trees. I mean we're kind of tangled together like they are."

She took a mental inventory of where her limbs were in relation to his and just said "Mmm hmm."

Rick noticed she still didn't seem to be too 'with it'. "Want to get a little more sleep? Your spa appointment with Joelle isn't until 12:30."

"Mmm hmm," she said again. Then she opened one eye and looked up at him. "Sleep now, then you can ravish me later. Sound okay?"

"Sounds wonderful." And he moved his hand to draw lazy patterns on her back as she drifted back to sleep, relaxed by the gentle touch. And it wasn't long before his hand rested limply on her back as he joined her in dreamland.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At 12:10, they were on their way to pick up Joelle, so Rick could take both of them to the spa for the afternoon. Dave had a conference call for work that he couldn't get out of, but he promised to meet them afterwards. On the way to pick up Joelle, Kate asked Rick what he was going to do to pass the time.

"Oh, I have a few things planned," he told her cryptically.

"And they are...?" she prompted.

"None of your business..." he replied quickly, without missing a beat.

"Rick, please tell me that you aren't going to do something silly."

"I'm not going to do something silly."

"Why am I still worried?"

"I have no idea, Detective," he told her with a smirk.

"There! I see that smirky grin! Castle, you're plotting something!"

"Oh, we're back to 'Castle' now, are we? Think you can order me around a bit more if you call me 'Castle'?"

"Whatever works," she told him haughtily, "and you called me 'Detective' anyway, so I'm just role-playing with you. Now where are you going?"

He said nothing, but the smirk stayed on his face and eventually aged into a full-blown, cocky smile. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to figure him out. She _knew_ he was up to something. And he knew that she knew. She just knew it. Oh, crap, now she was starting to sound like Rick at his most befuddled. Great.

"Oh, look," he said with a great deal of forced, fake cheerfulness. "Here we are. And there's Joelle, waiting for us. I'm so sorry we won't be able to finish our coversation!"

She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. "I'll just bet you're sorry. Remember, I do have a gun back home, and I know how to use it. I also have a best friend that will be very pissed at both of us when we get home, and I'm sure I can convince her it was all your idea to fool her, and I'm also sure she could give me the recipe for some very potent and untraceable laxatives that could easily be slipped into whatever you eat. So you just think about that before you try anything stupid when you're alone." She left Rick to think about powerful laxatives and without missing a beat, she turned to where Joelle was coming up by her side of the car as they pulled up. "Oh, hi Joelle. Ready for the spa? Let me tell you _all_ about Hans..." she said, purely for Rick's benefit. She saw the muscles in his jaw clench just a bit when she mentioned Hans. Purely reflex from his response after her birthday visit, she was sure, but she still knew how to push his buttons. And it was so fun!

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick dropped the ladies at the spa with promises to pick them up later in the afternoon. As he left, he jokingly cautioned the ladies not to have too much fun with Hans. They waved to him as he drove off, and then when he was gone, Joelle turned to Kate and said "I smell a story with Hans. And just from the little time I've spent with the both of you, I'm sure it's a good one. So spill." And they walked inside while Kate began to relay the events of her birthday to Joelle.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick was using the opportunity of being away from Kate. Well, actually it felt strange to think of being away from her as an opportunity, when he would have much rather been with her. But since he _was_ away from her (and it was probably actually a healthy thing for their new relationship to be apart for a few hours for a change), he was determined to make the most of his 'free' time. He was going shopping.

The other time he'd taken her to the spa, he'd bought her the necklace for her birthday while they were apart. But if he was romantically involved with a woman, he was a man who was accustomed to showering that woman with gifts. Since the necklace was a birthday present, he didn't feel like that counted as a 'relationship gift'. And since Kate had become the woman in his life such a relatively short time ago, he hadn't really had an opportunity to get anything for her other than the stuffed alligator pillow and the furry stuffed conch shell. And while they were cute, those two things just weren't enough. Not for him. Not for what Kate meant to him. But he knew he'd be walking a fine line, since Kate wasn't anything like other women that he'd been involved with and he knew she wasn't one for flashy, showy gifts. Hell, she'd probably get mad and yell at him or something. Maybe twist his ear.

So he had to be careful. The first thing...he knew definitely what he wanted to get her, if the shop even had it. He'd driven over to the mainland and using the GPS, located the shop. Luckily, they had the perfect item. And it was even somewhat practical. After it was purchased, he checked it off of his mental list. Then he went for a walk around the complex, looking at the other shops, doing some window shopping and sometimes going inside the stores to see what they had, and if anything jumped out at him and told him "Buy me for Kate!" He found some of his best gifts that way, by just browsing and looking at the possibilities. He had a list of a few things that he wanted to get, but was going to rely on impulse for the rest.

In the second store he went into, he found a little novelty thing...it was a very thin metal bookmark, shaped like an alligator. He knew she loved to read; he'd known that since day one. So this one...it was useful, it had meaning, and it wasn't expensive at all. He knew she'd have some fleeting recollection of 'their' alligator whenever she used it. Second item, check.

He was almost at the last of the shops when a display in a window caught his eye. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And when he saw it...it said 'Kate' to him. Sure, he had a feeling she would balk at the price tag, but really, there wasn't anything overly dramatic about it, so he was willing to take a chance that she'd be okay with it.

But when he went inside the store to look around...that's when the breath left his lungs. He was stunned. There was a display, and in the midst of that display was the most perfect thing for Kate. He never would have thought of it had he not seen it first, but once he saw it, it was all over. It was so Kate. Yes, he'd just found his perfect present. For his perfect woman.

Now he just hoped that she didn't end up shooting him after she saw everything. That wouldn't be fun at all.

_**

* * *

**_

For that first part, I thought I'd just have a little bit of fun with some innuendo of my own. You can fill in the blanks however you want. In the show, they've alluded to both of them being...shall we say, adventurous? So like I said, I had to have a little bit of fun with it. And I honestly didn't think of the writer monkey/monkey sex thing until I was typing it out. I had a little squee of my own at that moment, because it fit together so perfectly. It was a little out there, but since so many of you liked the spaceship innuendo, I hoped you might like that too.

_**I don't feel this one was my best, but it was passable (I hope). I had to have this chapter done in order to move on to the next one, so I viewed it as more of a means to (or toward) an end. And I've started working on the next chapter, and I'm hoping for that one to be really good (crossing fingers). Stay tuned!**_


	43. Chapter 43

_**Chaper 43...here we go.**_

_**Disclaimers: don't own anyone.**_

* * *

After checking in with Alexis back home, Rick called Kate on the way back, letting her know that he was running a little late, but he'd be there soon. She was fine; she and Joelle were having a smoothie at the Smoothie Bar in the spa. She tried again to get him to tell her where he'd been and what he'd been doing, but he just told her that she was on vacation and she could detect all she wanted when she was officially back to being 'Detective Beckett' again. For now, she was Kate, and he wasn't talking. He could tell from the tone of her voice that she was irritated with his reticence to talk, and he was laughing as he ended the call.

When he pulled up to the spa, however, that mood changed. After he parked the car and started walking up to the main entrance, he was met by Dave. An angry Dave. Rick didn't think Dave could 'do' angry, but if he didn't, he was doing a damn fine imitation.

Dave grabbed his arm and swung him around, leading him in the direction that he came from with a vise grip on Rick's arm. Rick managed to get a look at Kate and Joelle, who he could see were sitting on benches in front of the entrance. They were looking at the men with surprise and awe, as if they were wondering what was going on with those two.

Dave got Rick behind the corner of the building and let loose. "Man, I liked you! I thought you were _normal_! Then I find out...man, it's sick! You know, maybe some people do that sort of stuff, but not me! And I thought my _wife_ wasn't like that either, but now...oh, man." Dave just scrubbed his hands over his face.

Rick was at a loss. "Dave? Hello to you too. And, oh, what _are_ you talking about?"

"Your so-called spa!"

"Huh? I mean, I'm supposed to pick up Kate now, and I think Joelle was over there with..."

"Yeah, they're _both_ over there, after their 'massages'," he said sarcastically, doing air quotes around the last word.

"What?" Rick asked, holding his hands out in a sign of total confusion.

"You set this up! Why didn't you tell me that this was some sort of...I don't know. An orgy-fest place! Huh?"

"I repeat, _what?_" Rick was stunned. "It's a very high-end spa. Rave reviews."

"Oh, I'll just bet. But fine, to spell it all out for you: my wife, your girlfriend, Hans and Todd, the magic muscle men who know their craft soooooo well," Dave said, parodying his last few words by saying them in a higher pitched voice, like one of the women was saying them.

Rick caught onto one word. "Hans?" he asked Dave to confirm. With the mention of the name, he was starting to get an idea of what was going on.

"Yeah, he's one of them. Todd is the other. I have to tell you, I'm just not into that sort of thing. I mean, I hate to sound old-fashioned..."

Rick hated to do it, but he just couldn't help it. He threw back his head and laughed. Really laughed. Dave shot him a scathing look. "It's not funny. I mean, if you like that, fine. But us, we're not..."

Rick interrupted. "Dave, shut up. Those wonderful ladies over there...I hate to tell you this, but they're messing with you."

"They're certainly messing with something. Or something is messing with them. Or more specifically, a certain couple of someones named Hans and Todd." At the mention of their names, he again got a look on his face and said their names in a sarcastic tone.

Rick grabbed him by the shoulders to force Dave to look at him. "No, I mean they're _messing with you_. They're playing you, yanking your chain. There are probably massage guys named Hans and Todd, but that's all they do. _Nothing_ else."

"What about the 'patented double finger twist' move, huh? God, they sounded like they were ready to...you know...when they were just sitting there talking about it."

"Double finger twist?" Rick squeaked, his mind automatically turning to some of their activities earlier that morning. The double finger twist...ah. But then he shook his head and came back to the present. "No. You have to hear something. Sit." Rick pointed to a nearby bench, where he sat down and glared at Rick.

Rick began telling Dave the tale of Kate's first visit to the spa, and the drive home afterwards when Kate wove her very fine story about Hans and just about had steam coming out of Rick's ears. "She kept talking about how Hans does this and Hans does that, how Hans knows just how hard to push-"

"Hey, they said that to me too!" Dave exclaimed, the realization that he'd been played, and played well, dawning on his face. "So they didn't...this place isn't some..."

"No, and no."

"Why, those two..." Dave trailed off as he got up and began stalking over to where Kate and Joelle were still sitting.

The ladies stood up when they saw Dave coming toward them, with Rick several steps behind, trying to catch up. Kate looked at Joelle and said "Uh oh, I think we're busted."

Joelle took several steps forward to intercept Dave. She poked a finger in his chest before he could say anything. "Payback's a bitch, isn't it David?"

"Payback? What do you mean, payback? We're having a nice vacation and then you do...you were saying..."

She kept jamming her finger in his chest with each word that she spoke, although there were only five of them. "Lucy, Cameron and Drew. Remember now?"

For the second time in the last minute or so, realization dawned on Dave's face. "I'd forgotten about that."

"Yeah, I know. But _I_ haven't. I was thinking about breaking our engagement because of that little stunt of yours. Believe me, I remember it well."

"What are you two _talking_ about?" Rick asked, but Kate just hit him with her elbow and murmured "shut up." She knew what was going on and she could fill him in later.

The other couple looked at them, as if finally remembering that they were still there.

Joelle took a breath. "Sorry, Rick, Kate knows because I told her earlier, but I'll tell you. When we were engaged, so were some friends of ours. Dave was in their wedding party and they had a bachelor party. So I get him to promise...you know, nothing wild. You can get my drift; we're engaged, he's taken. So they come back from the party and all of the guys are a little blitzed and they start talking about how hot these girls are. Some girl gets naked and was swinging from a sheet...some hot dancing with some girl in a club...bunch of stuff like that. I'm thinking they got pretty wild after all and did some stuff that is not conducive to starting a faithful journey of matrimonial bliss. This goes on and on. I'm not happy; I was young and insecure and I'd just had an absolutely awful week. This was the last thing that I needed. So just when when I'm seriously ready to get out the old butcher knife and go at the parts south of the border,"-Rick's eyes got big and his hands unconsciously clasped in front of him at her remark-"the guys start busting a gut laughing and telling me that they got into an advance screening for the 'Charlie's Angels' movie. This was years ago. So they're talking about the stuff in the movie like they did it, along with a certain amount of embellishment."

"Ah," Rick said, "Lucy, Cameron and Drew. Drew was the naked girl hanging from the sheet."

"You got it. So when Kate told me about her little Hans joke that she played on you, I couldn't resist trying it with Dave." She turned to Dave. "So _honey_, I just have one word for you...touche'."

"You've been planning revenge on him _that_ long?" Rick asked her in astoninshment.

"Oh, no. But when given the opportunity to exact revenge in the exact way that he got me, would have passed up the opportunity if you were me?" Joelle explained to him with a grin.

He thought about it for a bit, and then just simply said "Nope." And he turned to Dave. "Sorry, Dave."

Dave didn't say anything, he just still looked at them warily. Kate broke the silence. "Dave, if you need any more reassurance, Hans is a 50 something grandfather, and Todd is gay. And for the record, you took a lot longer to take the bait than Rick did. Rick was so easy! We had to go into a lot more...uh...detail to get you to buy it. Sorry."

"What kind of detail?" Rick wanted to know. "Well, aside from the finger twist move."

Kate shared a look with him and then looked away. "Later," she told him, patting his arm.

"Well, Dave?" Joelle asked.

He thought about it. "We're even. And let's call a truce...no more of this type of thing."

"Deal."

After they restored peace, the two couples talked for a few more minutes before going their separate ways. Joelle and Dave had dinner plans and Rick had some plans of his own, although Kate didn't realize it yet. In the car on the way home, Kate wasted no time in questioning Rick. "So where did you go and what did you do this afternoon?"

"Uh uh uh," he told her, shaking his head. "You'll find out in due time. And not a moment before."

She shot him a sideways glance. "Do I have to worry that your mysterious adventure might have involved naked girls hanging from bedsheets?"

He grinned. "I think I had enough of an adventure last night with a naked girl hanging from some stairs. And that one is more than enough for me."

"She was never fully naked, you know."

"True. And you never really answered the question."

"I often forget that I'm in the presence of an expert interrogator. So I can give you an unequivocal 'no' to your question. What I did today had absolutely nothing to do with naked women, hanging or otherwise."

"Castle, do I have to twist your ear?"

He ignored her direct question. "You know, you always say I'm the one who's like a little kid. Impulsive. Impatient. And...yeah, you're right, most of the time. But tell me, Kate, just who is the impatient one now? Huh?"

She raised one eyebrow, but then lowered it into a glare. "Oh, just shut up."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate was standing out on the deck in her favorite spot, watching the sunset. After he tossed a couple of steaks on the grill and seasoned them, he picked up the glasses of wine that he'd poured and took them over by her. He handed her one and then took a sip of his own. She held the glass casually. Casually, but elegantly, like she seemed to do everything.

"Only a few more nights to watch this..." she said, her words trailing off.

He put his wine in his left hand and snaked his right around her waist. She leaned her head against his neck. "We can always come back, you know."

She sighed. "The thought's nice, but you know how real life is. Well, maybe _you_ don't. But for the rest of us who have regular jobs that we actually have to show up for, it doesn't work so well for us to jet off to a tropical paradise on a whim."

"Hey, there are long weekends..." he tried to reason.

"And you have a daughter that you need to spend time with too. She's probably going to resent me as it is for keeping you down here for this long."

"Don't even think that. I told you we talked before, and she's good with things. Us. And I talked to her this afternoon, and yes, she's excited for our return, but let me stress the word 'our' to you. I can't tell you how many times I heard your name or 'you guys' come out of her mouth. Frankly, I feel a little replaced. She's busy making plans for a big dinner next week, and for your shopping trip for that dress that she needs. She sounds so far away from 'resentful' that she'll need a new zip code. So get that thought out of your head right now."

"I'm a novelty right now. When that wears off, she'll just want her dad back."

"She'll always have her dad, and she knows that. She's a smart kid. Takes after her old man." He timed it in his head, and sure enough, the eyeroll was right on cue. "But the difference is that now she'll have you too. If you're okay with that."

"Rick, she has a mother already, and she's almost all grown. She doesn't need someone trying to upset the apple cart."

"Nobody's asking you to be her mother. Just be her friend. Someone she can turn to if she needs a friendly face or a good ear, or even an adult that has more experience at life than she does. That's all."

She was silent for a minute, just watching the glow of the sinking orange ball in the sky as it reflected on the waves. "I can probably do that," she declared softly.

He turned his head sideways and kissed the side of her face. "Thank you."

They stood in silence for several more minutes, just sipping their wine. Then Rick gave her another kiss as he stepped away from her. "Stay here. I have to turn the steaks and then get something."

She did as she was asked, not wanting to sacrifice the beauty of the sunset in front of her in order to keep tabs on him. She got so lulled by watching the waves that she didn't even know he'd come back until she felt his lips on her neck as his arms stole around her waist from the back.

After the quick kiss, he turned her around and held out a gift bag that she didn't even know he'd been carrying. "I got you something," he told her.

"You got me something? Why? Is that what you were doing this afternoon?"

He smiled. "In answer to your questions, yes, because I wanted to, and yes." He held out the bag to her again. "Here. It won't bite. Take it."

She grabbed the handles of the bag warily, while casting a suspicious look at him. She took a deep breath before she looked-after all, with Castle, it could be anything. Then she reached her hand in and brought out a small box containing...a camera.

"A camera?"

He nodded. "Memories. At the risk of sounding sad and melancholy, when you don't have something anymore, like when we're back home from this little vacation, all you have are the memories. Sure, you have them in your mind. But those fade. And they're just flashes. I know you treasure the pictures of your mom. I'm sure if you'd known that you were going to lose her so early, you would have taken thousands more, to preserve every little nuance, every little smile or expression that you could. They could never replace her, but I think that looking at them is comforting."

At the mention of her mother, Kate's eyes got big. When he mentioned preserving all of the memories of her, she unconsciously nodded just a bit, agreeing with him.

He paused for just a second before continuing. "Although it's not on par with your mom by any means, I treasure the time that we've had down here. I hope you do too. Well, except for the Justin Bieber thing. So I thought that we should preserve some of our own memories while we still have some time left. This time has been special in so many ways, but the most important is that I have you now. _I _would like some pictures of you...of us. I got a little tabletop tripod too, so we can set the timer on the camera and take pictures of the two of us. When everyone knows about us, I want to have a picture of us on my desk. I want one to carry with me. I'd love it if you wanted one of us too. Because I want us both to remember our time down here, and not let the memory of it fade as more time goes by."

By the time he was finished, she could feel tears in her eyes. "Castle...Rick...that's so...it was a wonderful thing to do. Really. I...I don't know what to say." She walked forward and wrapped her arms around his torso, and he returned the embrace. Then a thought stormed into her mind and she pulled back to look at him. "Are you planning on dying or something soon? Because that kind of sounded fatalistic. Are you okay?"

He smiled a cocky smile at her. "I'm fine. You won't be able to get rid of me anytime soon. I just wanted to start doing something about it now, rather than potentially regret it later." He looked out over the ocean. "So should we take a picture? There's still some of the sunset left. Everything works...we tested it before I left the store."

"Well, by all means, Mr. Photog...start snapping away."

Rick took the camera out of the box and attached it to the tripod. Setting it on the table, he made Kate stand by the railing while he aimed the camera. Then he pushed the timer button and ran to stand by her. "There's a ten second delay, and then I set it to take five pictures, two seconds apart. Kind of like one of those photo booths in the arcades. Smile!"

The flash went off and they were both smiling for the camera. Then Rick turned her face to his and kissed her just as the next flash went off. "Funny face!" he shouted then, and they made a goofy face at the camera. Flash. "Now look at me like I'm hot." The fourth flash of the camera caught his cocky grin and her eyeroll perfectly. "Okay, normal again." And he put his face on her shoulder and they both smiled nicely for the camera again.

They both went back to look at the series of pictures on the camera. They were sweet, they were goofy, and they were fun. And she knew that she'd treasure them always. She put her arms around Rick and tilted her head up to his. "Thanks," she said simply. The sentiment was a simple one, but the meaning in the tone was so much deeper.

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This chapter got longer than I wanted so I had to split it into two chapters. Hopefully the next one won't take too long.

_**Please review! I love to read them (well, the good ones anyway)! I have so many people following this story, so I know you're out there...let me know what you think!**_

_**And I loved it that Beckett was singing the rapper song at the end of the episode! Too funny! I didn't even catch it either, that's what's pathetic. I saw people talk about it on message boards so I went back to rewatch it.**_


	44. Chapter 44

_**WOW...such great response about the last chapter. DaveInACave...you blew me away. And Odonata, I hope your roommates don't institutionalize you before I finish the story! That would be sad! And thank you so much to everyone else who reviewed! I was just about falling asleep by the time I posted the last chapter, and it was such a reward to wake up the next morning and see all of the great reviews! Made me want to really work to crank out this chapter.**_

_**I'd originally intended to go a bit farther with this chapter, but once again, it was getting longer than I wanted, so I decided to cut it in half and post this now to appease those of you who say you live for updates, and to reward those who are still following this even after all of this time.**_

_**Enjoy!**_

_**Disclaimer: still don't own anyone.**_

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"By the way, I got you a photo printer too."

Kate sat playing with the camera, trying to figure out some of the bells and whistles. She knew just by looking at it that it was not a low-end model. It was small, sure, but she had a feeling Rick had gone top of the line with this. At his off-handed comment about the printer, she looked up. "You what?"

"I got you a photo printer. To print the photos you take. Do you really think that I'd make you send prints of _us_ out to the corner photo lab where some crazed fan could come across them and try to make a few extra bucks selling them? Do you want to open up page six and see one of the pictures we just took?"

She hadn't even thought of that. She closed her eyes as the implications of what he said. Oh, this whole paparazzi subterfuge thing was going to take some getting used to. "You know, Rick, most of the time I'm not entirely comfortable when you throw your money around. I know this little piece of digital wonder," she told him, holding up the camera, "must have put a little dent on your gold card. But the printer? I have to say...good move. My continuing anonymity thanks you."

He smiled at her as he tended to the steaks and vegetables on the grill. "Not a problem. And it's a platinum card. But I've been dealing with this a bit longer, so feel free to call on my vast expanse of knowledge on the subject anytime you need it. But just so you know, some of it may cost you," he finished with a sly grin on his face.

"I can just bet how you'd think of exacting payment for your services."

"Oh, you'll find out," he said cryptically. "But I'm not so sure that you'd really think of it as a sacrifice, when all is said and done." After the heated look between them, he looked at the other source of heat-the grill. He declared, "Dinner is just about ready, madam. Would you mind getting the wine and the bread from the house?"

She set the camera down on the chair and went into the house. Rick nonchalantly watched her leave out of the corner of his eye and then as soon as she was out of sight, he scurried over to where he'd hidden the bag. He placed it on her chair, and then grabbed the other box out of his pocket and hid it under her napkin on the table. Earlier, he'd made a big deal out of folding the cloth napkins in a fancy way, thinking that the elaborate fold would make a good hiding place for one of his presents. She'd rolled her eyes at him, but he knew that shortly she'd realize the reason for what he did.

She came out holding the wine in one hand and the basket of bread in the other, with some herbed butter balanced on top of the basket. She poured a little more of the wine in each of their glasses and then placed everything on the table. Rick brought the plates over to the table from the grill, and gestured to her to sit down. And only then, as she was pulling out her chair, did she notice the bag. "Rick. What's this?" she asked him, holding up the bag, along with one of her eyebrows.

Not intimidated at all, he just grinned at her smugly. "Kate, I thought you were a detective. It's a present, of course. See the gift bag with the sparkly design on it? That just screams 'present'. And it's kind of...pink, and that's a more feminine color and you're the only female here, so huh, I guess it's for you."

"Castle..." she started.

"Kate, just open it. You'll see that it's kind of for me too, in a roundabout sort of way."

She sat down, and with a wary glance at him, peered into the bag. She looked up at him, and then back down in the bag. When she looked at him again, she asked him, "Is this what I think it is?"

"Oh, yeah," he told her with an unmistakable gleam in his eye, obviously very proud of himself.

She reached down into the bag and brought out the small scraps of bright yellow fabric. The fabric had an almost iridescent glow to it. She held up the top of the string bikini to examine it, and then held up the bottom. "Well, it's...uh...a lot like the red one. You got the size right, so that's really pretty impressive. But do you realize that with the color, this thing will be pretty much transparent if I wear it in the water?" And as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she thought, 'oh, brother, I walked right into that one.'

The blank look on his face was in total contrast to the fire in his eyes. "You don't say?" he asked innocently, but then came clean. "That thought did cross my mind, yeah." Then he gave her a seductive half-smile to let her know _exactly_ the thoughts that were crossing his mind right then.

"I can see now where you said that the present is for you too."

"But now, much as I hate to say it, put it away now. That thing is highly distracting. Do you know what it was like standing in the store while the worlds slowest clerk rang it up for me? I mean, she keeps tossing this thing around and I'm just watching and thinking of you wearing it..." he trailed off, looking into the distance, but then snapped himself back to the present. "It was hard to keep my dignity. Thank goodness for high counters and the fact that she finally put the damn thing in the bag. But now, we need to get through dinner. These steaks smell too good to waste. And I'll probably need the sustenance later anyway..." he trailed off as he started cutting his steak. Kate smiled but did as he asked, shoving the yellow bikini back into the bag and placing the bag under her chair.

Kate took her napkin from where it was sitting and then all movement stopped as she saw the small jeweler's box. The breath left her lungs and whooshed out. She almost physically jumped back, away from the box.

Her first instinct was to ignore it. Just pretend that she never saw it. But she knew his gaze was on her, waiting for her to acknowledge the box. "Rick...what is this?" she managed to squeek out. That little jeweler's box was the last thing she'd expected to see. And it scared the living daylights out of her.

"Go ahead, open it. It's not scary," he said, as if he'd just read her thoughts. "Really."

"Rick..." she said again, reaching hesitantly for the box but still afraid to even touch it.

He reached over and covered her hand with his. He didn't say anything until she rose her bewildered eyes to connect with his calm ones. "Trust me. It's not what it looks like. Open it."

She cast a wary glance at him, but then took her hand out of his, took a shaky breath that did nothing to calm her sudden bout of nerves. She picked up the box. And opened it. And when she registered what was inside, she discovered that she could breathe again. She felt like an asthmatic must feel after using an inhaler. But still, she registered the beauty of the simple pair of diamond earrings and blew out a long breath. "Castle..." she started.

"Why are we back to 'Castle' now? What happened to 'Rick'?"

"It's more instinctual for me to call you 'Castle' when you exasperate me. Like you're doing now. A camera and printer? And now diamond earrings?" She didn't mention the implication of seeing the little jeweler's box sitting there.

"Don't forget the bikini."

"I'm not. But you said yourself that was for you too. This..." she gestured at the box, "I don't even know what to say."

"How about 'thank you, Rick, they're beautiful'?"

"They are beautiful. And thank you. But it's just...too much. I mean, there's not even any reason for you to get me something like this!"

"I love you." He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly, as if it was a given and explained everything. And of course, she felt that familiar little tingle in her belly, partially because it _was_ such an off-hand comment that he didn't even have to think about.

"But I don't need these."

"I knew you'd say that. But look...they're not huge. They're not even reasonably huge. Do they really look like anything that _I_ would buy?"

"They're _diamonds_, Rick."

Good, so they were back to the use of the first name. That was good. He forged on. "Kate, I want to buy you things. It's not like I'm going to the poorhouse if I buy you a little pair of diamond earrings."

"That's not the point."

"Kate, I buy things. I have the money to buy things. I love you. Therefore I want to buy _you_ things. And really, is this so bad?" She met his gaze, which had a certain amount of unintentional puppy-dog-ness to it, but she didn't say anything. He was trying to be endearing, and darn it, it was working. "I know it's kind of unexpected, but is it really so bad? Guys buy their ladies jewelry all the time. And I did restrain myself. I figured if you wore them to work, you wouldn't want anything huge. So they're tiny. Piddley. Microscopic. I'm almost embarrassed to say that _I_ bought them. You know, they're so small that if you dropped one on the beach, it would probably get lost among the grains of sand, never to be seen again." Then he got a (laughingly) determined look on his face. "You know, that's probably true. They _are_ pretty pathetic. The hell with dinner; I'm going to go right back to that store right now and get you some that are worthy of being given by Richard Castle."

He started to rise out of his chair and he made a move to grab the box from her, but she pulled her arm away, a smile sneaking onto her face. "Point taken. Now sit down and eat."

He sat back down with a smug grin, knowing his little burst of the dramatics had done it's job and had lightened her mood just a bit.

"But really, Rick, promise me you're not going to be buying me stuff left and right. I don't...I'm not used to that."

If she expected him to blindly agree to that, she was sorely mistaken. He shook his head and said "Nope. No can do," as he popped a piece of steak in his mouth.

Of course, she _had_ expected him to blindly agree with her. She was used to the Castle of the last week or...she guessed, the last several years, who she could wrap around her finger, who she could get to do a lot of things with just some innuendo and provocative looks. So when he...refused (the nerve of him!), she stopped cutting her steak and glared at him.

"What do you mean, no?" she demanded.

"No. If I want to buy you something, then I'm going to buy it."

No, she was not used to him cheerily and willfully going against her. She kept up her glare, intending to make him squirm, but for once he was having none of it. And she was oddly disconcerted.

"What if I won't accept it?"

"You will. Because I have excellent taste. If you know anything about me, you know that."

"So just because you might have good taste, I have to let you give me gifts like I'm some little concubine?"

"I'll ignore that because you know that's not who you are to me. I love you. I don't say those words lightly. And you're going to let me give you gifts because they'll be tasteful, or classy like you, or will have a purpose, like the camera. I mean, it's not like I'm going to get you a four-foot tall bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln to stand beside your desk, or get you a new chair covered in hot pink fake fur. I got you that red dress early on, and that turned out okay, right? And Lanie even thanked me for not allowing you to go to that gala dressed as an aging prom queen, so that must have been fine."

She made no comment, so he continued. "I don't get a charge anymore out of spending my money on anything just to spend it. I want to use it to make people happy. Or use it for a purpose. I mean, hey, your coffee at the station _absolutely sucked_ so I got you all the cappucino maker. It's useful and it helps people because they're not getting sick from that sludge that you used to have. Better for the crime fighters to fight crime if they're not suffering from ptomaine poisoning."

She finally spoke. "But the earrings...they don't make me happy, and they really don't serve a purpose." She was a little surpised at the sting that she heard in her words. "I..." she immediately tried to explain herself but he cut her off.

"No? They'd make me happy, seeing them on you. Doesn't the girl in you like them a little, because they're diamonds and because your guy gave them to you? Don't worry, you don't have to answer that." He took a bite of bread this time, still looking smug. "So, no, I won't promise to not give you gifts. That just doesn't work for me. But I will promise to take your...shall we say, reticence into account and gift accordingly."

"What if I conveniently 'lose' them?"

"You won't," he said confidently.

She bit her lip, cutting to the heart of the matter. "I don't want people to think that I'm some brainless idiot and you're my sugar daddy. If you keep giving me gifts, that's bound to happen."

"Kate, I'm not going to deck you out in furs and sequins and expect you to wear them to the precinct. That's what a sugar daddy does. Accepting a little-and I mean little-pair of earrings and a camera does not make you a brainless idiot. Besides, one of the things I love about you is your brain. But if you start acting like a brainless idiot and get all giggly and everything, I just may have to see about having your chair covered in hot pink fake fur."

God, why did he have to be like this? He was being cocky and was totally not listening to what she was saying. And damn it, he was still cute. And he did have a bit of a point, somewhere in there. Finally, she grabbed the camera from the seat next to her, and after turning it on, snapped a picture of Rick across the table from her. He grinned at her at the last moment, but had his mouth closed and his cheeks full of food like a chipmunk.

"What was that for?" he inquired after he swallowed.

"To preserve memories, right? And now, thanks to that picture, I'll always remember how annoying you were at this moment. I think I'll use my _new photo printer_," she said sarcastically, "and print it and hang it up. I'll title it 'Portrait of a Rich, Bullheaded Annoyance'.

"Are you going to take a red marker and draw a red heart around my face?" he asked, batting his eyes at her.

"Only if I can put an arrow through it," she deadpanned.

"Ouch." But then he threw one right back at her. "Well, if I have to have an arrow through my head, could the arrow at least maybe have some diamonds on it? Diamonds that are really small so as to not cause anyone to look twice at them?" He knew she'd have to get used to this, but he knew he could make it work.

Once again, he timed it in his head, and her eyeroll at his comment was right on cue.

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We still have a few more gifts, and I hope you like the one I have planned for the next chapter. A lot of that chapter is written, so hopefully it shouldn't take too long.

_**(For the 'Blizzard' fans, I haven't forgotten about that one at all; I just have to get through my inspiration burst for this and then I'll start flip-flopping chapters between the two of them again.)**_

_**Hope you enjoyed it! Comments are always welcome (well, the good ones anyway-haha).**_


	45. Chapter 45

_**Thanks for the reviews for the last chapter. I love it when I see that people are still interested! I think you're awesome!**_

_**This chapter has been burning a hole in my brain for a long time. I'm so happy to finally be able to post it! Now, hopefully, that brain space can be recycled and used for other plot stuff or stories.**_

_**And welcome to A R Claire, who is burning up the FanFiction pages catching up with this story!**_

_**Disclaimer: still don't own anyone or anything in the story below.**_

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After a reasonably silent remainder of their dinner, they started talking again, but judiciously avoided mentioning anything to do with gifts. The silence wasn't really one born of anger, but was just one of some introspection, of coming to terms with a shift in their collective dynamic. It was an evolution. They were still the same people, but how they related to each other was developing and changing. The evening just marked one more step in their evolving relationship.

After they cleaned up and Kate tucked the camera, the bikini and the pair of earrings safely in their bedroom, they decided to go for a walk on the beach. They didn't say much, but just held hands and walked.

"So how long do you want to stay?" Rick asked her, thinking they needed to broach the subject of going home and back to the 'real world', even though he really didn't want to think about it.

She swung her hand in his a bit, appearing to think about his question. "I suppose it's time to figure that out, isn't it?" He nodded. "It's funny that we have to talk about going home. At the beginning, I was so sure I'd never even make it the full two weeks. I thought that either you'd drive me insane or I'd kill you long before then. Now here we are, holding hands and having a romantic stroll on the beach. If you'd told me that we'd be doing this two weeks ago, I would have thought you'd gotten into the confiscated drug locker and took a few too many deep breaths."

"Funny how things work out. But good too, right?"

She looked up at him. "Mostly good. It's just going to take a long time for 'Nicole' to forget her Bieber serenade though." She paused before getting back to the original topic. "So how long were you thinking of staying?"

"I was thinking that I could arrange to have the plane ready on Sunday morning and we could be home by early afternoon. Then you could have some time to unpack, go through your mail, unwind...you know. How does that sound?"

"That's...fine. Good." How could she say to him, after everything, that her very first, unbidden thought was that it was too soon? That, as much as she loved her life and what she did, she couldn't quite imagine going back yet? No, she couldn't say that, _wouldn't_ say that, so his idea remained 'good'. "I'm sure I'll need some time to unpack and everything."

They walked for a few more minutes, and then turned around to head back. Rick walked in the waves, and then, all of a sudden, stopped. "Look," he said.

But he didn't do anything. Perplexed, she asked him, "What exactly am I looking at? Your dinner digesting? Your beard stubble making you look more ruggedly handsome?" she chided.

"Funny. But no. I've always been amazed by this. You just stand here in the waves. At first, the sand is really dense and wet, and you might make a footprint, but you don't really sink into it, not like you can with the dry sand. But then if you manage to say in one place, a wave crashes over your feet, and it seems like you sink a little as the sand around your feet gets disturbed by the waves. Then another wave comes, and you sink a little more. So pretty soon, after more and more waves crash on you, you can get so firmly entrenched in the sand that it's really hard to get out."

Rick joked around so often that she was still getting used to his more serious side. And he said all of this with a certain amount of thought that she just _had_ to wonder if there was more than one meaning to his words. Well, she supposed, she really didn't have to wonder if he intended it that way. She _took_ it that way, and that probably said it all. Metaphorically speaking, she was the sand. He made a footprint, but then he stuck there...he'd stayed. And he sunk a little more into her life. And now he was so firmly _there_, in her life, that the thought both amazed her and scared her.

But looking at him, looking at her, she knew that he _was_ making the point that she thought he was making. So she took the bull (or the bullheaded author) by the horns and walked over to him. "My, Mr. Author, you're certainly having deep thoughts tonight. Leave it to an author to make a relationship metaphor about wet sand."

"So you got that, huh?" He gave her a small smile. God, he loved her quick mind.

"It's just another form of innuendo. Yes, I got that." She grabbed his hand and tugged. Hard, because he was already sinkining into the sand pretty well. "Come on, let's go."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They made it back to the house, and grabbed their glasses and the unfinished bottle of wine. When Kate went the bedroom to change her shirt, Rick hid the last few presents under a pillow on the couch, and then sat down in the corner next to it. When Kate came back, she settled down beside him. Or more specifically, laying side of him, with her head against his chest.

"Ummm...this is nice," she told him, contentedly.

"It's just like that first night that we spent together, right here. It felt good to wake up with you, just like this."

He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the side of her temple.

"But you didn't do that the first time," she told him, referring to the light kiss.

"I was scared to _move_, let alone show you any sort of affection. I thought for sure you'd shoot me for having my arm around you. I just woke up and I had this delicious feeling of you leaning against me, and I thought I was dreaming. But then I opened my eyes and I found out that I wasn't. It's one of the most conflicting feelings I've ever had...wondering if I should stay right there and not move, or get the hell out as fast as I could so you didn't wake up and freak out at our positions. I didn't even know how we got in that position in the first place. Not that I'm complaining at all! But it was just surprising that morning. I never dreamed we'd be waking up like that."

"I have a confession." Without even looking at her, he knew she was probably biting her lip and wondering if she should have said that.

"Did you drug me and ravage my body while I was sleeping, and now you're feeling guilty?" Knowing, inferring that she was uncomfortable, he tried for humor for a little bit of levity for the situation.

She reached back and thumped him on the head lightly. "You dope. No. But you fell asleep right here, like this, and I just leaned back against you and cuddled in. Didn't even need a blanket with all of the heat you give off. And I took your arm and put it around me. I was surprised at the time how nice it felt. And I just went right to sleep. A lot of times, it's hard for me to fall asleep. My mind just won't shut down. But that night I just went right to sleep."

"Leaning on me."

"Leaning on you," she confirmed.

"Why did you do it? Cuddle up to me?"

"I honestly don't know. Even now. I don't know what made me get that close to you then. Maybe because you were asleep and I could test it out in relative safety? I don't know."

He was silent for a moment, and then he shifted. As he shifted, he slyly brought out one of the remaining presents and handed it to her. When she saw it, she turned her head around to look at him questioningly. "More stuff? Geez, Castle."

"We're back to 'Castle' now, huh? Come on, open it. Once you see what's in the bag, there's absolutely no way you'll be able to call me 'Castle' for giving you this."

Even from the odd angle, he could see her pursing her lips and wondering what he could be up to. But she said "Fine!" and took the bag. She opened the bag and brought out the long, skinny, metal alligator. And laughed. After the diamond earrings, it was definitely not what she expected. She turned it over and kept looking at it. "Okaaaaaay, but _what_ is it?"

"A bookmark! You read, so it's perfect for you. And it's thin enough so it won't hurt the binding of the book. And it doesn't even have any diamonds on it," he added pithily. "So how can you argue with that? It's practical _and_ it was economical."

"Well, yes, I suppose. It's just so...well, it can't be kitschy because it's not pretentious enough. I guess it's just relatively normal. And sometimes I can forget that you can do normal."

"I can do normal as well as the next guy. Kate, I just cooked steaks on a grill at home instead of going out to eat for a $400 dinner that I could well afford. You don't think that's 'normal'?"

"Don't forget that said steaks were cooked on said grill in the back of a mansion on the beach of a tropical paradise," she countered.

"Details, details," he said, grinning. "Would you rather go check into the Holiday Inn Express down the road?"

She was used to the house by now, loved the house. The thought of a perfectly nice, but ordinary hotel was no longer appealing to her, and he had nailed it. And with her protestations over the diamond earrings ringing fresh in her mind, it bugged her. "Oh, shut up," she told him.

His arm closed a little more tightly around her. "Kate, it's okay that you like some nicer things. It's human nature. It doesn't make you less of a person. You're still a great human being who helps people every day by putting away the bad guys and bringing closure to the families of those affected. With your beauty and brains, you could have done anything, but you chose to be a cop, an overworked, underpaid public servant. But you're a person too, and you can't neglect that side of you, and deriving pleasure from what makes you happy, or the other part of you won't be effective anymore. That's why you're here, remember? It's not like you robbed a bank, or I did. You staying here as opposed to a hotel doesn't hurt anyone. If you like it, it's not a big deal. It's like my laser tag. I know you think it's childish. But I have a good time, Alexis has a good time, and it doesn't hurt anyone. I can afford it. So I figure...it's worth it. Simple."

Yeah, right, she thought. But there was a certain logic to what he said, even though she wasn't totally comfortable with this lifestyle yet. Sure, her money didn't come as easily to her as it did to him, but she'd been known to splurge on frivolous things too. He could just afford to splurge on a daily basis. And aside from the money, they meshed. She registered the feel of his arm around her, the feel of his chest at her back. Yes, they meshed well. She leaned back into him and closed her eyes. She felt him press a kiss to the side of her head.

After several minutes, he told her "Don't, uh, get too comfortable. There's still one more present that I have for you."

"Is it a magnet?"

"Huh?" he asked, wondering what she was talking about.

"When we went on vacations, my mom and dad and I, we'd always get magnets from the places we'd been. So I was thinking that if you got me a magnet, then I wouldn't have to go shopping for one."

He tucked this little tidbit-o-Beckett away in his mind, but then told her, "Sorry, but no. Not a magnet."

"Before I give you this, just know that I don't expect you to say anything. But don't freak, okay?" By his words, she was starting to get worried. Rick Castle rarely tried to butter her up for anything. He just _did_ it. What could he be planning? What could be bigger than the diamond earrings he just gave her? God, she hoped he didn't try to call Montgomery and get her another week of vacation or something. _That_ would be embarrassing.

He reached under the pillow and brought out the little jeweler's box. Great. Another pair of earrings, probably. She was a little bit relieved that it appeared that he _didn't_ call Montgomery. Rubies, maybe? He was always commenting about when she wore red, and he'd loved that red bikini. But then he popped it open in front of her, as he still kept his other arm around her. He felt her sharp intake of breath as her mind registered what her eyes were seeing inside the box.

It was a ring.

It was a beautiful, gorgeous diamond ring.

_It was an engagement ring._

"Oh, my God!"

She sat up a little bit and looked at him, her eyes speaking volumes about how confused and totally shocked she was. He still kept his arm around her, but he looked her right in the eyes and said in a calm voice, "Hear me out before you start freaking out."

"Too late! My God, Castle, what the hell? That's a...a..." she couldn't even form the words on her lips.

"Yes, I know full well what it is. And I know that's why you're freaking out. And that's why you have to listen to me first. Really listen. And breathe. Normally. Okay?"

Her heart was racing out of her chest, and she pressed a hand to it as she took a few deep breaths. She simply gave a small nod, because right now she was incapable of any other response. Unless she threw up, because she was feeling a bit dizzy and ill from the shock of what was in that little box. She took another deep breath.

He began, "Kate, I love you beyond words." She just continued to stare at him, and he noticed that her breathing was a bit ragged. When it was obvious that she wasn't going to lay back to relax with him on the couch again, at least not now, before they talked, he sat them both up and pushed her back into the other cushions, so they were now sitting side by side. He continued in that calm voice, because he had an idea of what she was feeling now and she needed that calming outside influence, although the butterflies in his stomach were making it hard. He knew he wanted to do this, to put himself all out there for her, but he was still nervous nonetheless, because no singular conscious act that he'd done had ever mattered so much to him and his future.

He forged on. "Kate, listen to me, and hear me. I don't want you to say anything now, no answer. We've had so much miscommunication between us, even while we've been down here. I wanted that to stop, here and now. I decided that the best way to change that was for me to just put it all out there...cut to the chase. I wanted you to know how I feel, and this is it. This is what I'm feeling, this is where I want us to go. Us-you and me-growing old together. Forever. This-you and me-is not just a fling to me. It's real, it's 'it' for me, and I'm totally in. I didn't want there to be any doubt in your mind. I had an epiphany of my own sometime in the last 24 hours, and I didn't want to...I _couldn't_ leave this unsaid any longer. So I wanted you to know that this is where I'm at, here and now and forever. I love you...I can't put into words how much. There just _aren't_ words, even for me. I want to be married to you, sometime in the future. I'm in this for the long haul." When he uttered the 'M' word, he heard another sharp intake of air coming from Kate.

He took a deep breath, because he needed one after the rush of first part of his speech. To be really clear, he just paraphrased what he had just told her. "I'm not going anywhere. I figured this was the best way to let you know that, to be perfectly clear with my intentions."

He stopped talking for a few seconds, but his eyes never left hers. He reached a hand around her back and tried to gently rub the muscles there. "Now that all of that has been said, I know you're not ready for that yet, and like I said, I don't expect an answer now, or even anytime soon. I hope someday you will be ready to take that step with me. But I wanted to make it crystal clear to you that I'm here, I'm yours, and I'm not going anywhere. I'm stuck to you like Gorilla Glue. I hope you still want me stuck there. No more miscommunication. No more hiding what's inside. You now know exactly where I stand. And I really hope you don't want to go running away from me, screaming at the top of your lungs about what a lunatic I am."

She still stared at him, looking shell-shocked. "What can I...what do I do? God, Rick, what in the hell am I supposed to say to that? We barely been together for a week!"

"We've been _together_, like that, for less than a week-you're right. But you know we've been really together for a lot longer, even though it wasn't really what you'd call traditional. And what are you supposed to say now?" He shrugged nonchalantly. "I really don't care, as long as you don't say 'no' or tell me to leave you alone. Well, scratch that...I would like one thing: I'd just love to hear that you love me. I truly don't expect you to say anything else. And I do _not_ want to hear a 'no'."

She was still staring at him, with her mouth opening and closing, like she was ready to say something, but then decided not to. Finally, though, she managed to formulate some words.

"Yes, I love you." He breathed a visible sigh of relief at her words. She continued on. "You just proposed to me." She said the words with something akin to awe in her voice.

"Well, technically, no. I didn't." He was being very literal now, and he felt a grin tugging at his face as he disputed her claim.

"Shut UP!" she told him, whacking him lightly on the chest. "You just freaking _proposed_ to me!"

"Kate, I thought we covered that. I didn't. I simply stated my feelings and my wishes, so you'd have no doubt about the sentiment behind my actions. But now, actually, I would like to do something. Bear with me for a moment. Now that you know where I'm coming from, I want to make sure I do this right, so in the future, when you look back at this moment-fondly, I hope-you won't have any regrets." He held up one finger. "And I still don't want you to answer me now."

She watched in wonder as he slid off the couch and kneeled on one knee, resting his elbow on the other knee. He held the box with the ring and looked into her eyes. As he did that, and realized the importance of this moment, and the importance of this woman in front of him and how much she meant to him, he began to get choked up. He wasn't someone who normally got emotional, not like this. But she'd done it to him, for now the second time within a week. He could feel some moisture in his eyes, but he took a deep breath and tried to get some control over the intensity of his feelings so he could get this out. "Kate, you are the one woman in the world that makes my heart go pitty pat. It's pitty-patting so fast right now that I don't know if I'll be able to get this out." Deep breath, he thought. "I never tire of looking at you or being with you, and I love you to distraction. I know I'll continue to because now that I know what it's like to be with you, I don't want to be without you. You're my partner in more ways than one. You're my inspiration for more than Nikki Heat. You told me once that you're a 'one and done' type of girl. I realized that, more than anything, I want that 'one' to be me. I know I've made some mistakes in the past, but I think I've learned from them. I would never willingly do anything to hurt you. I want to be with you, to make you happy, for the rest of my life. That's why I'm standing in front of you now." He looked down at himself. "Well, actually I'm kneeling. But the intent is the same. I want to spend my life with you, as your husband, if you'll have me. Will you marry me?"

By the time he reached the actual question in the monologue, she had tears in her eyes. She was speechless, and was trying to formulate something to say-because this whole thing had caught her so off-guard that she couldn't give the obvious answer. But she needn't have worried about what to say, because he took care of that part of it too, as she was about to find out. He raised himself back up to sit on the couch side of her. "There. That's more in keeping with the romantic type of proposal that you deserve. That's the one you should remember when you think back on this. And like I said, I hope it will be a pleasant memory." But she was surprised when, after he asked the question, he quietly closed the box and placed it in her one hand, placing the other of her hands on top of it to form a cocoon around the box. At her questioning look, he explained.

"I told you I don't want an answer. I know it's too soon for you to give me one. So whenever you are sure that you're ready to do this, just open that box and start wearing the ring. That will be my answer. And then I'll know that you're ready."

She stared at him, her eyes still brimming with unshed tears. "You think you're pretty sly, don't you, giving me the earrings first, in the same type of box, and then springing a ring on me. It's like a bait and switch." She swiped at her eyes with her hands, trying to regain some composure after the last several, very intense moments. Of course, the best way for her to gain composure was to give him a hard time.

"It worked out pretty well at not having you freak out when you saw the actual box with the ring, but it wasn't all according to plan. I just pretty much gave you the presents in the order that I bought them."

"Sure. Right. That's just way too much of a setup for it to not be intentional."

He held out his hands, palms up, in a show of innocence. "I'm being honest and open here, remember?" He gave her a puppy-dog look and leaned back on the couch. "I walked into the jewelry store and saw the earrings. I could just see you wearing them. But then there was a display case, and that ring was in it, and I swear my heart must have stopped. I knew it was perfect for you. And I knew I had to get it."

She didn't have any more of a response. As she looked at him, he pulled her arm gently toward him, and she took the invitation to cuddle into him again. "So," he began after several minutes of silence, "I think you should really use one of your gifts."

She turned wary eyes up to look at him, obviously thinking he was talking about the ring. He knew where her mind was going. "No, not the ring. I told you that that's for when you're ready, and I meant it. I know there's no way you're ready yet. I'm not even talking about the earrings. And since you've already used the camera, and I _really_ don't expect you to read a book now..." he trailed off, raising one eyebrow and a half-smile forming on his face.

By easy process of elimination, she knew where he was going. "You're wondering if my new bikini fits? Like maybe I should model it for you and you can see if your size estimate was right?"

"You read my mind. It's uncanny how you do that," he told her with mock sincerity.

"Hot tub, pool, or ocean?"

"You decide." He gave her a lusty, but quick kiss. "Text me," he added with a lusty look to match the kiss, in reference to the first bikini interlude.

"I'll do that," she said with a smile as she got up and went upstairs. When she got to the bedroom, her breath caught as she realized that she still had the ring box clutched in her hand. She closed the door, leaning against it on the other side. And then she took a breath and opened the box again to stare at the ring. It really was beautiful. Not large enough to be gaudy, but exquisite. And for her! She ran her finger over the largest diamond before somewhat reluctantly closing the box. She walked over to the suitcase and tucked it safely under some of her old clothes.

Not now. Rick was dead on-she wasn't ready now. But, she thought with a little smile, maybe someday...

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That's it for this chapter. I hope I surprised at least some of you with what happened. I figured that you'd either really love it or really hate it, but of course, I hope it's more of the 'love' variety. I know it seems sudden if you go strictly by days, but that's why I had him explain it the way he did: He knows that eventually, he wants them to get to that point. So why not make his intentions known now, and just avoid anymore miscommunication?

_**So anyway, thanks for reading! Reviews are always welcomed (and of course, I'd really like to know what you think of my little bombshell).**_

_**I would also like to know if you'd like more details about the use of the yellow bikini, or just afterthought summarizations or references. ;-)**_

_**Oh, by the way, video sneak peeks are up for The Final Nail, if you haven't seen them yet. ;-)**_


	46. Chapter 46

_**Wowzers! The comments on the last chapter...the response...just wow! Thanks so much to all of you for reading and leaving your comments in the reviews. I SO appreciate them! I said at the end of the last chapter that people would either love it or hate it. Well, the vast majority (of those who responded, anyway) were sitting in the 'like' or 'love' camp. I'm so glad! Whew!**_

_**Anyway, here's the next chapter. And I still don't own any of the characters, but I'm taking them to the beach a lot.**_

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He proposed to her.

Before changing into the bikini, Kate stripped out of her clothes and applied some of her cherry-scented body lotion. She made sure to use it liberally on whatever skin wouldn't be covered by the bikini, which was basically her entire body. She knew he liked it, and really, there was no question about how the evening would end. The destination was decided, but how they would get there...that was going to be the fun part.

_She had an engagement ring sitting in her suitcase._

The bikini fit much the same as the first one, except the fabric at the bottom of the bikini top was gathered over the string, so she could adjust exactly how much of her was covered by each of the triangles.

_The ring was gorgeous._

She could go for more of an illusion of what lay underneath, or she could bunch up the fabric into a narrower strip and leave very little to the imagination. Since Rick had such a vivid imagination as it was, she went with the former. But a smile formed on her face as she thought of a little fun that she could have with him. Long, drawn-out, tortuous fun.

_She could be engaged right now if she just walked over to the suitcase, opened the box and..._

No! The thoughts of that not-so-little ring in that little box in her suitcase kept filtering into her brain. She'd tried to push them out of her head and think about the evening to come, but those thoughts just kept sneaking back in. She felt like _she_ was the nine year old on a sugar rush who couldn't keep a thought in her head-or out of her head-for a solid minute.

She knew-as Rick knew-that she wasn't ready to go there yet. But then why couldn't she stop thinking about it? Why did she feel this funny little smile bloom on her face when she thought of the ring, at the same time that she felt almost ill at the prospect of what it meant? And why did she get that little kick in her belly when she remembered him going down on one knee in front of her, with that ring in his hand?

She was going insane, she was sure. Rick Castle was driving her insane, in a much different way than he did when he first started shadowing her, but he was still doing it. His methods had just evolved. She was doomed. She loved him, he loved her and he'd done just about the biggest thing he could do to prove it to her. She never thought she'd be here, thinking about this, getting ready to go downstairs and seduce him in a barely-there bikini, wanting to sneak one more peek at an _engagement ring_ that the man had given her, and _loving every minute of it_. Well, loving it except for when she still felt sick when she thought of the 'M' word. Yes, she was well on her way to insanity. And it was going to be one hell of a ride.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick sat on the couch where they'd been before she went upstairs to change. He couldn't move. He also couldn't stop smiling. He felt...liberated. He would have no regrets. He'd done all that he could to make sure his dream-having Kate in his life-would come true. He didn't mess it up with bad timing or with not saying enough. It was a good feeling.

She took it well, considering how much of a shock he knew it would be for her. He'd escaped without bodily injury, she was now changing into the bikini, and most importantly, she'd taken the ring with her when she went to their room. He didn't hold any illusions that she was trying it on to see how it looked on her hand to fawn over it-Kate was not that type, and he somehow knew that she wouldn't put it on until she was ready to make that committment, and then she wouldn't take it off. But even if she wasn't fawning over it, he hoped that she'd at least opened the box and looked at it again.

And she was changing into the bikini. Just thinking about it made his body hum with anticipation. He would always love the red one, but this yellow one...ooo la la! He knew from their conversation that there would be some water involved in tonight's adventures. He tried to think of what she could be planning. An encore to their first time, in the ocean? The spaceship in the pool? Or maybe their little port in the storm, the hot tub. Any or all of the above were fine with him. Except they might need the entire night for the 'all' option.

He daydreamed a little more and then he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He smiled ruefully. With thinking about Kate in the bikini, his shorts were buzzing enough without adding his phone vibrations to the mix. He took the phone out of his pocket and read the message: "_Go out the front door, turn right, walk, turn right again. You'll know when you're there."_

He read it a second time with a puzzled expression, just to make sure he'd read it right. What was she doing? He mentally went through her instructions; they should take him around the side of the house, and there was absolutely no water there. Palm trees, yes; flowers, yes; water, no. Maybe she was taking him on a treasure hunt. Was she going to keep texting him? But what if it ended up in the ocean? If his present state when thinking about the bikini situation was any indication of how his mind would be working as the rest of the night wore on, then he'd better try to settle one thing now. He hit reply for the text and typed '_will I need my phone anymore?'_ If she led him to the ocean, or pushed him in the pool, or coerced him into the hot tub, he wasn't sure he'd remember his phone later, so he wanted to take care of that now. He did not want to have to replace his phone. The simple text came back quickly: '_no_'.

Intrigued, he lifted himself off the couch and made his way to the front door, laying his phone on the breakfast bar on the way. He went out the door, being careful to shut it as silently as he could. He walked down the steps and creeped toward the right of the house. He was trying to be as stealthy as possible; he didn't know what she had planned and with the way she'd gotten him several times before, both intentionally and unintentionally, he wanted to be as careful as he could.

He rounded the corner of the house cautiously, the second and last of the right turns that she'd told him to make. There wasn't very much light anymore; only the light that was shining through the uncurtained windows on that side of the house. He walked slowly forward, trying to see in the distance, trying to see what she might be up to. He'd taken about five or six steps when her head and shoulders peeked out from a tree about six feet in front of him, and she said loudly and cheerily "Hey, Castle!"

He jumped and yelled. Of course he jumped and yelled. She laughed. "Surprise you?" she asked him, smiling.

"Uh, yeah!" He still had his hand on his chest. "Geez, Kate!" As he looked at her, he could see that she was still hiding mostly behind the tree and he was wondering why. He wanted to see the bikini, darn it!

"Good. That's not the last surprise either. After all of the surprises you gave me tonight, I thought I'd give you a few. That was the first." She paused, and then smiled a smile that made him gulp. Uh-oh. "And here's the next one." With that, she brought her hand up, and she shot him. Right in the chest.

With water, using the spray nozzle of the hose.

As he jumped and hollered about how cold the water was, she used her precision aim to make sure that every last inch of the front of him was soaked. But as she was soaking him, she stepped out from behind the protection of the tree to-finally-reveal the yellow bikini to him.

And he stopped jumping and hollering and simply stared. She continued to soak him with the spray from the hose, but at the sight of her in the bikini, conscious thought had left him and he didn't even register the water anymore. She dropped the hose down to the ground and walked slowly toward the waterlogged Rick.

"Magnificent" was his brief response.

"Thank you," she told him. "Glad you like it." She started moving backwards, toward the back of the house and the beach. Unconsciously, he followed.

His faculties were starting to return, thanks largely to the amount of cold water that was now dripping from his sodden clothing. "After I got your text, I was wondering why I was coming out here. We'd talked about water, with the bikini. There's no water here, or so I thought."

"I've proven you wrong then?"

"Yes. But why not one of the larger, more normal bodies of water that we've already used? The ones that are _warmer_?

She shrugged. "I wanted to try something new. I saw the hose when I was out for one of my runs and I ran around the side of the house. I remembered it now when I was thinking about something different to do. I wanted to keep you guessing."

"But the water was for you. For, uh, that," he told her, gesturing to the bikini. "Which, I have to say, looks..."

"Very small?"

"That too. But I was really going to say...very _dry_." He said the last word as he leaped forward and grabbed her, hugging her scantily clad body to his dripping one.

"Ah...Castle!" she shrieked as the cold wetness of his clothing came into contact with her body.

He still held her tightly as she squirmed. "I'm getting this flashback to your birthday when you squirted me with the kitchen sprayer."

"And you got me wet then too!" She pushed away and he finally relented, and she stepped back away from him.

"Like you didn't get _me_ wet, then or now? Really, Beckett. And as I said, for tonight the water was supposed to be for you. And I can see that while it's a going to take a little more, I'd have to say that it's a very nice start." He made no secret of looking at her body appreciatively, referring to how the now-damp swimsuit showed off nipples distended from the cold dampness of his shirt.

"Shut up, Rick. And let's go for a walk." She grabbed his hand and hand and started hauling him toward the back of the house. Rick was game to follow her.

After they got to the beach, he asked "Where are we going?"

"I thought we'd walk around and look for seashells."

"_Now?_ While you're wearing _that?_" He gazed lustily at her bikini again.

"Sure. Why not?" she challenged him with a pointed look.

"Kate. Really." He gave her a pointed look of his own. "And it's kind of dark out here. How are we supposed to even be able to see any shells?"

"You can see me just fine, right? Then you should be able to see the shells."

"But the difference," he whined, "is that I don't _want_ to look at shells. I _want_ to look at you."

As she arched her chest just a little more toward him (which of course made him totally lose eye contact with her as he gazed down), she reached up with her hand and patted his cheek. "Patience, Rick, patience." And she turned and headed toward the edge of the water.

As she sauntered away from him, he watched the gentle sway of her bottom with the brief piece of yellow covering it. She bent down to look in the sand to see what the waves washed up. Shells? Really? Now? This woman was going to be the death of him.

When she couldn't feel Rick's eyes on her anymore, she sneaked a peek toward him and found that he was, indeed, looking at the shells in the sand. She made sure her back was to him and she reached down to her bikini top and adjusted the fabric covering each breast so it was gathered just a bit more tightly, thus making the fabric just a little bit narrower on each side. Then she grabbed a few somewhat interesting shells for a conversation piece and walked back over to him. The shells didn't really matter; she would bet money that he wouldn't really be looking at them anyway.

She was right. She ambled over toward him, and his gaze dropped to her chest. His brow furrowed a bit like he was trying to figure something out. She made some semblance of talking about the shells in her hand, and he muttered some sort of a reply. It was amusing that they were both engaged in a conversation, but neither was paying attention; he was looking at her suit, and she was watching him. After she'd made sure he got enough of a look, she walked away, again under the auspices of finding some seashells that were extremely interesting. When he'd looked away from her, she adjusted her top again, this time narrowing the fabric even more. She gazed down at herself. Man, this was bordering on indecent. But she knew Rick would love it, and it was so fun teasing him. She couldn't wait to see the look on his face. She stood up and didn't really look at him, but strolled slowly toward him again, her gaze on the sand. But she knew when Rick caught sight of her, because she heard a sharp intake of breath followed by a breathy 'huuuh' sound coming from him.

She looked over at him innocently and walked up to him. "Is something wrong, Rick? You didn't hurt your foot on a shell, did you?"

He said the first thing that came to his mind. "Kate, your top is shrinking." Then somehow, he managed to tear his gaze away from the shrinking suit and looked at her face. He saw the innocent expression that was trying to hide her amusement.

She asked him "So what kind of a present did you get me if it shrinks when it gets the slightest bit damp?"

He looked into her eyes, sparkling with amusement. "Apparently the best kind," he told her, moving forward so their bodies were touching. "You," he scolded her, giving her a quick kiss, "are a tease." His words let her know that he'd figured out what she was up to.

"You're the one who got me this thing. I just put it on."

"And...uh, adjusted it rather enticingly, I might add." He bent down and captured her lips in what started out as a soft kiss, but became a kiss that grew hot and sultry exceedingly quickly. He rubbed his hands up and down her back, pulling the back tie of the top to untie it as his hands came into contact with it. But when those same hands pulled her closer to his body, she gasped and pulled away when her bare skin came into contact with the cool dampness of his shirt.

He released her before he pulled the shirt over his head and threw it over his shoulder into the sand. "Don't forget that," she told him. "We don't want to start a trend of leaving clothing down here."

Some movement in the distance made her look past Rick's shoulder then, and she would be eternally grateful that she did. Not too far away, she could make out a couple walking on the beach toward them. And here she stood, in the beginning stages of another hot beach make-out session with Rick, wearing a swimming suit that was covering next to nothing. And one that was now hanging partially off her body, thanks to Rick untying the strings around her back. "Oh, my God! Rick...someone's coming!" she whispered. She couldn't really take off running because they were close enough to see. She pressed her body into Rick's and ordered in a low voice, "Don't move. Stand in front of me. This is soooo embarrassing! If you move an inch, so help me, I will burn this suit. After I make you put it on and take a picture of you."

Rick held her tightly to him, with his arms wrapped around her and his back to where the people were walking. She didn't want to look, so she kept her forehead down on Rick's chest, and the other couple walked past them at a fairly good clip. Maybe they were some of the beach walkers that you always seemed to see. After a couple of minutes, she asked "Are they gone yet?"

"Long gone. It would have been nice to say 'hi' though. I didn't want to be rude."

She rolled her eyes. "You want to be nice to some strangers? Fine. Do it sometime when I'm not standing around nearly naked."

"We never saw anyone the last time," he noted.

"If you'll recall, it was 3:00 in the morning. It's barely, what? 9:00? Plenty early for a moonlit stroll. How could I be so stupid?"

"You were just hot for me and couldn't think straight." That earned him another eye roll and he grinned at her." Don't worry...it happens a lot."

"HapPENS, like present tense?" She raised an eyebrow at him in question.

"Not anymore. New developments, you know. I just have to get used to changing my verb tenses since I'm officially off the market."

"You be sure to work on that."

"Tomorrow." He looked around to make sure there were no more moonlight beach strollers. Upon finding none, he turned her around and started walking them toward the house. "I have other things I'm working on tonight."

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Yes, I ended it there. Yes, I'm evil. Well, anticipation is half the fun, right? Like we don't have enough anticipation before Setup...ha!


	47. Chapter 47

_**First, let me apologize profusely to everyone following this story. I never intended this update to take this long. I'd written a chapter or two of 'Blizzard' after chapter 46, and then I just could not get my 'Plan' writing engine started for the longest time. **_

_**But alas, it did finally fire to life. I hope you enjoy the latest chapter. I think I've given up on trying to move things along faster because it never seems to work out. So I'll just continue to let the characters tell me what they want to do, and we'll go from there. **_

_**And thank you for all of the wonderful reviews so far! Welcome and thank you to all of the new people who continue to start to read this mega-monster that I have going on here. I hope I'm keeping you entertained.**_

_**Disclaimer: don't own any of the characters, and for spending so much time in Florida, they're going to have great tans when they return!**_

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"Where to?" Rick asked as he climbed the stairs to the deck.

"Take a wild guess, Writer Man," Kate challenged him.

"Well, since you didn't call me 'Writer Monkey', I'll have to assume it won't be the stairs again," he surmised, remembering the recent jungle/stairs interlude. That earned him an faint head shake from Kate. "If I had to venture a guess, though, I suppose I'd pick the hot tub, especially after your cold little blast from the hose earlier."

"Good choice." But on the top step, she stopped suddenly and took note of his bare chest. She put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around. "Nuh-uh, buster. Go get your shirt. Remember? We are NOT going to leave more clothing on the beach overnight."

As he trotted back down to the beach, she tied the back of her bikini top again. She had enough of walking around with it half off her. It just felt weird. Rick came back up the steps with his shirt right after she finished. "Kaaaaate!" he whined. "Why did you tie it?"

"Not a nude beach, Castle, and I've had enough embarrassment for one night. Why don't you go make yourself useful and make me a frozen margarita. I want to enjoy the hot tub."

"_I_ wanted to enjoy the hot tub too. With you. And your bikini. Or maybe _not_ with your bikini..." he trailed off as he waggled his eyebrows.

She put her hands on his back and pushed him into the house. "Margarita, Rick. Now. Hot tub skinny dip, later." With one last puppy-dog glance at him, he went into the house as she turned on the timer for the hot tub jets and then climbed in the warm water.

Okay, that little bit of seduction went south in a hurry when they were almost caught by the other couple. Perhaps she'd gotten a little to accustomed to this seclusion thing at times. Sure, they'd seen and interacted with other people several times. Not all had been willing interactions, like the episode with Billy, but at least that one was certainly memorable. She still chuckled when she thought of the word 'tallywhacker'. They'd even found some new friends in Joelle and Dave. But largely, they'd been by themselves. Even the beach by the house was hardly used by others. It was like they were in their own little world whenever they wanted to be.

She sunk into the water on one of the contoured seats in the hot tub and gazed up at the palm trees that were on the side of the deck. The moon was high in the sky, and it was bright, so she could make out the palm fronds swaying in the gentle breeze against the backdrop of the night sky. It was so idyllic. It was serene.

_She had an engagement ring in her room._

Óh, there they came...those thoughts of what had happened earlier in the evening. Those thoughts that simultaneously turned her to mush and made her feel ill. When she came down here, she never thought she'd become romantically involved with Castle-Rick-before the vacation was over, much less be the recipient of what might have been one of the sweetest and most off-beat proposals of marriage in the history of marriage proposals. But was pure him, and even though she wasn't ready to give him her answer yet, she could appreciate the sincerity and the emotions behind it. And even though she was still freaking out a little bit, she could appreciate his thought process, how he was 'putting it all out there for her, leaving her with no doubts as to where he stood in their relationship. She knew enough about the man to know that if he committed to something with his words and actions, he didn't go back on that. He might be light-hearted at times, he might love to joke his way through life, but he was true to his word. And if he committed to something, she knew he _was_ committed.

She was so lost in thought that she didn't know that Rick had come back until she felt a hand lightly caress her arm underwater right before he leaned in and gave her a light kiss on her cheek. She turned to him. "Oh, hi," she said, a little surprised that she hadn't noticed him coming back outside, or even heard him crawl into the hot tub.

"What world were you visiting just now?"

"Just thinking..." she told him, still gazing up and the silhouetted palm trees swaying in the ocean breeze.

"Obviously. Were you, perhaps, on another journey to freak-out land after your visit to the _ring-side_ seats to the diamond show?"

She tore her gaze away from the calming palm trees and looked to the man who regularly turned her ordered world upside down. "Very punny, Rick," she told him in response to his play on words. "I went to see that show again, yes, but I didn't get a chance to make it all the way to freak-out land."

"That's good. I mean, about you not getting to freak-out land this time. Maybe this will help you out too." He reached back and handed her a tall glass full of a smoothly blended frozen strawberry margarita.

She took a long sip and then leaned forward and let out a little cough after she swallowed it. "Geez, Castle, is that thing ninety percent alcohol?"

"I figured you might need a stiff drink after what happened a little while ago. Loosen you up a little. I had a feeling you'd still be thinking about it and stressing out a little bit. Think of it as a stress reliever." He didn't speak about it specifically, but they both knew what he was talking about.

She nodded slightly and took another sip of the strong drink. And then another. She felt Rick's hands on her shoulders, beginning to massage them lightly. "You know," she told him, "we should just say it. _'The ring.' 'The proposal.'_ It was what it was, and it is what it is. We both know it happened, and I don't think either of us is likely to forget anytime soon, barring a case of amnesia."

"I know I won't forget, but I thought you might want to forget for a little bit, so I didn't want to be too overt in my words." His voice held just a touch of melancholy.

"Since when?" she quipped, giving him a hard time.

She took another long sip of the drink before setting it down and turning around to face him and continuing in a more serious tone. "Just because it caught me off-guard doesn't mean that I want to forget about it. It was..." she looked away, trying to find a good descriptor. "Special. Wonderful." She leaned in to give him a kiss. "I appreciate you not pressuring me and knowing that I'm not ready to give you an answer yet. But I also don't want this to be the second coming of the elephant in the room that makes things uncomfortable for us. I don't want it to be like the whole thing from last summer. So just be patient with me-and I know you, but please try anyway-but don't feel like you can't ever bring it up. Okay?"

He leaned in to kiss her this time. "Okay."

"But," she said as the thought popped into her head, "no bringing it up in front of Lanie or the guys. Or your mother or daughter."

"Won't they figure it out if they hopefully see you in a long white dress someday?" he joked.

She spashed some water at him. "I mean right now, you doofus. For the immediate future, until things are a little more...decided." She took another long sip of her drink.

"If we're being totally open, then shouldn't we just say we'll keep it between ourselves until you give me a resounding 'yes'?"

"Pretty sure of yourself, huh?"

"Yup," he said confidently. "And now that I know how well it works to kidnap you, I'll just plan to do it again sometime if you take forever to give me that resounding 'yes'."

"How do you know I'd go with you? Remember, I know your M.O. now. I'll be a lot more suspicious."

"Maybe I'll just start withholding sex."

She laughed heartily. "Puh-leeze! Like you would last ten minutes."

"Hey! I'll have you know that I have amazing restraint. Look at how I resisted you when we first came down here."

"Only until I really started turning on the charm...and you. Then you were a goner. A goner with a boner. A lot of boners."

Rick smiled, because she seemed like the alcohol was now having some of the desired effect of loosening her up. She reminded him of how she was when she was tipsy on the plane ride down here. She was so cute. As he smiled at her she took another sip of the drink. He looked at the tall glas and noticed that she had it over half finished already. "So how is your drink? Is it working at relieving your stress level?"

She looked off to the side, considering his words. "I would say so. That first sip was a doozy, but I'm used to it now. Now it's pretty smooth. Want a sip?" She held out the straw to him and he took a sip. Wow! He did make it strong!

"I know something else that's a great stress reliever, though," she told him as she leaned toward him, jutting her chest out so she was rubbing it against his pecs.

"What might that be?" he asked coyly.

"Why don't you see if you can figure it out?" she told him right before she set her glass down on the deck behind him, then leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his neck and touched her lips to his. When he responded by encircling her body with his arms, she found she needed to be closer and crawled onto his lap, wrapping her legs around his body. Unconsiously, she moved the lower half of her body against his as they kissed, and quickly upped the pace of her movements once she realized how good it felt.

After several minutes of her kisses and the erotic movements of her hips against him, Rick had to pull away. "Kate...wait. Just wait. You...God, woman, what are you trying to do to me?" he said, breathing heavily.

She was breathing equally as hard. "What do you think? I want you. And I have all of this...stress...that just needs to be relieved." Her voice was sultry, sexily challenging. "Remember, it was all because of you. You created the problem, so you have to fix it. In fact, I _demand_ that you fix it. Now."

"Demanding things now?"

"Yes. And to be a little more demanding, I'm going to say that you have to keep your hands off my new suit. You can use your hands on my skin, but not my suit."

"You'd better take it off then, if you want me as badly as I want you right now."

"Nope. That's your job. Use your vivid imagination, writer boy."

He pulled her hand down into the water to touch him through his shorts. "Writer _MAN_, Kate. I think this proves it." After she smiled knowingly at him, he stood them both up in the hot tub and walked around to her back. With his teeth, he grabbed the end of the strap from those tied around her neck, and pulled. After the bow came undone, he grabbed one of the strings and pulled on it so that both strings were hanging loosely down her back. Then, going back around to the front of her, he backed her up to the wall where there was no seat. When she got there, he lifted her up onto the edge of the hot tub and went to stand between her legs. Finally, he gazed at the now very wet yellow bikini top which was plastered to her skin, and was indeed rather transparent in its drenched state. He felt a little more heat in his groin area just looking at her.

She looked at him expectantly, and then cupped his face as she leaned into him for a passionate kiss. He felt himself getting lost in her again, and he pulled away once again because he knew he had more business to take care of. He eased her body back a little bit and bent down to untie the side of her bikini bottom with his teeth. He pulled the strings on the one side apart and then kissed his way across her belly to the other side, where he repeated the process. Then he used his tongue to draw a light line back over to the middle of her abdomen by her navel. He spread her legs a bit more and kissed his way further south until his mouth came in contact with the triangle of yellow fabric covering her femininity. Taking the edge of it in his mouth, he peeled it down until it hung between her legs. When he let go of the fabric with his teeth, he began to lazily kiss his way back up her body, starting at the juncture of her thighs, causing her to throw back her head and let out a breathless gasp when his mouth touched her heat briefly. But he didn't stay there long, and quickly made his way back up to her breasts, where his teeth went back to work on the fabric covering her breasts. He quickly pulled the fabric off and then took her nipple in his mouth, teasing the tip with his tongue and sucking on it mercilessly. She leaned forward into him and grasped the back of his head, pressing him closer and urging him to continue. She ran her fingers through his hair as his mouth worked on her. He'd added his hand as soon as the fabric was gone, per her instructions, kneading and caressing the rest of the orb as his mouth worked on the peak. When she let out yet another moan, he switched his attention to the other breast and relentlessly let his hands and mouth take over that one too.

She reached toward the waistband of his shorts and panted "Now, Rick. God...now." She scooted forward on the edge of the hot tub as he fully freed himself from the confines of the shorts. She pulled him toward her as she spread her legs more to accommodate him, but he didn't join them together as she thought he would. Instead he guided himself to her a different way and began to tease her by just pushing the head of his shaft against her sweet spot, pressing hard and moving it around, much as he had the first time they were together. He knew that what he was doing was as arousing to her as the anticipation of what he _wasn't_ doing quite yet.

She was breathing so heavily, and it was driving him mad. But he wanted to first see her explode for him, and then he wanted to _feel_ her explode again around him. She half wanted to get away from his pulsing shaft, but she also wanted what he could bring her. She was going crazy. "Rick, God, just do me now...come on...please...in me..." she pleaded, panting.

"No, Kate...let go now...you want this..." He pressed against her just a little bit more firmly, and with his words, it was enough to cause her final undoing. Her hips were starting to quake, along with the lower half of her body. She wrapped her arms around him as she buried her face in his neck as she began to let go. "Ahhh..." she panted. "Rick...my God, you...oh...ohhh..." Happy that he'd driven her to that peak, his guard was down when she suddenly reached down with one of her hands down to take hold of him, and she positioned his shaft so that the involuntary quaking of her hips let him be driven into her. As she felt him finally enter her, she let out another moan of pleasure, filled as she wanted to be by him as the quakes and tremors of erotic bliss continued to overtake her body. "Ohhhh...yessss," she whimpered as he filled her.

Once she took him inside of her, just as she was letting go, he let out a strangled cry of "Kate! Ohhh..." and he didn't know if he could hold out for her to have a second time. The feeling of her orgasm as it exploded through her was almost too much to bear. Her words and breathy sighs added to the ecstacy. Once he was inside her, buried to the hilt in her slick warmth, he couldn't stop himself and his hips moved almost of their own volition, pumping in and out of her without mercy. The spasmodic clenching of her internal muscles eased after a minute, except for the occasional aftershock, but even those little pulses threatened to send him over the edge. But he wanted to feel her let go a second time. He grabbed her bottom and hauled her a little closer, if that was possible, and she responded by throwing back her head and wrapping her long, beautiful legs around him, pulling him further inside her if that was possible. He knew she wasn't done; he just had to be able to hold out for her. When she tipped her head back, he dipped his own head and found one of her nipples again, ever so lightly biting it with his teeth, which earned him a sexy cry from her. Then as his hips continued their pumping, his lips formed a seal around the nipple and the suction of his mouth combined with his tongue flicking against the very tip had her crying out again. Rick's brain was in no state to decypher anything, but it almost sounded as if she swore at him.

Finally, she grabbed his face in her hands and brought their mouths together hungrily for a searing kiss. The collective speed of their hips was increasing in fervor. Her hands left his face and she raked her nails lightly down his back, until they found his ass, which she grabbed to help him drive himself more fiercely into her. When his mouth left hers and made its way down her neck, he felt her breathing become even more erratic. Her breathy pants of "Oh...ohhhhh...that's it...yessss..." were the start of his undoing as he watched-and felt and heard-her give in for a second time. As he felt her release, felt her muscles clenching him inside of her so tightly, and heard her moans of pleasure, he thought for sure that right now, there was no better, more magical place in the world to be. As he succumbed to his own release, he drove into her wildly and echoed her own moans of pleasure with those of his own.

When their bodies were both spent, she collapsed against him and he braced his hands on the side of the deck, not fully trusting that his legs would be able to hold him up after the tumult that he'd just experienced. They could feel each others hearts thumping at a furious pace. He raised his head a bit and surveyed the hot tub, then put his arms around her, holding her close to his body as he said "Come here." He kept her with him as he took a wavering step backwards toward one of the seats, sitting down with her and letting her collapse against his chest. She looked up at him with the look of a totally satisfied, well-loved woman, and gave him a sweet, lingering kiss.

When their lips separated, his curved into a self-satisfied smile. "Ms. Beckett, I think I'm developing quite the fondness for string bikinis."

"You know, I am too. Especially the reaction they evoke in you."

"I'm thinking that I'll be happy to keep you supplied with string bikinis of various styles and colors for the rest of your life."

"And I'm thinking that after this, you're going to get a major hard-on whenever you see any sort of string bikini, to the point of making shopping trips potentially very embarrassing for you."

"Ah, that's why there's online shopping. I can sit at my desk and have my hard-on be totally private and hidden."

"Always a plan, huh?" she joked.

"Of course," he confirmed with a grin.

_**

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**_

Well, a number of you said you wanted some more smut, so I hope you're satisfied (really, no pun intended). That was the most difficult part of this chapter, for some reason...I just could not get my brain in gear to write the M-rated parts. But it's done now, so like I said with chapter 24, I guess if you have the urge to find a hot tub and jump someone, I guess I've done my job.

_**And of course, I have to mention the Countdown previews, especially the second one. WOW! Can't wait!**_

_**Anyway, back to this chapter...thoughts? Let me know what you think! And again, thanks so much for reading!**_


	48. Chapter 48

_**My goodness! I am amazed! First of all, just when I think I'm about all tapped out in my smut-writing capabilities, I post something and people end up going wild over it. Just...wow. Okay. I can honestly say that I never expected the kind of response I received for chapter 47! But thank you, thank you, thank you! I will still try to reply to as many reviews as I can, but I've been working at getting this chapter up and ready to go.**_

_**Second, through a couple of comments in reviews, I've become aware that this fic is making the rounds of some blogging sites, in a good way (a very good way). Once again, I'm thoroughly amazed. And really, that doesn't begin to cover it. I did some searches and had some truly OMG moments. Seriously, I'm just speechless. Or, considering that I'm writing this, I guess I'm wordless. ;-)**_

_**And for all of you new people who have just found this fic or have just caught yourselves up (big kudos to you...I know how long this thing is!), thank you for taking the time to read it, and I'm glad you're enjoying it.**_

_**Disclaimer: I still don't own Castle.**_

* * *

Kate awoke slowly at first, but then became more aware of her surroundings as she realized that her own personal bed warmer was nowhere to be found. She was laying on her stomach, and when she opened her eyes, she had to laugh because she was face to face with the goofy little eyes of the stuffed conch shell animal that Rick had bought for her at the nature preserve. With a smile, she reached up with her hand to grab the animal, and she hugged it to her naked chest as she turned to lay on her side in the big bed.

She laid there, hugging the stuffed shell, for a few minutes as she woke up. She opened her eyes and checked the bedside alarm clock; it read almost seven o'clock in the morning. Where was Rick?

That question was answered about a minute later as the smell of coffee wafted to her nose. As she smelled it, she sat up a bit, hugging the sheet to her to cover her chest a little bit, and turned around toward the door. She saw a smugly smiling Rick carrying a small tray into the room, holding two cups of coffee and...oh, my gosh! Was that a bear claw? Where did he find a bear claw?

The bright smiled bloomed on her face as she saw the favorite treat and she looked up at him, ready to ask him about it, or thank him, when she saw the grin leave his face as his facial muscles went slack. He bobbled the tray just a bit but luckily caught it before he could spill coffee all over her and the bed. After he righted it, he set the tray down on the table and then sat on the side of the bed by her, his eyes never leaving her face except to make sure that he had the tray securely on the table.

She put her hand on his shoulder, with her fingers trailing toward the back of his neck. "Rick, what's wrong?" she asked, worried at the abrupt change in his demeanor.

He still stared at her, but finally found his words. "Absolutely nothing at all. Everything's right."

"Then why the look?"

"You're amazing. It's one of the most beautiful sights I've seen...you had this incredible smile lighting up your face-hell, lighting up the room-and you were sitting there, with just the sheet barely covering you, with your hair all tousled because you just woke up..." He shook his head, then he reached out with his hand to run his finger over her bottom lip, and then her cheek in a gentle caress. "That smile...it took my breath away right then. And I'm the one that's here to see it. Like it's a present for just me and me alone. I feel..." He never finished his sentence, he just shook his head in what looked like amazement.

She swallowed over the lump in her throat. How sweet was that...that he could come almost undone because she smiled at him? That he appreciated it, and valued such a simple thing? She didn't want to sit here and get emotional over how sweet the man could be, so she simply told him, "You brought me a bear claw," as if that explained everything.

"You can have bear claws every morning for the rest of your life if I can see you smile like that." The words were said with quiet solemnity, a serious intensity that he didn't often display. She still had her hand on his shoulder, so she slid it to the back of his neck and pulled him to her for a little peck of a kiss as she rose up to meet him.

"Love you," she told him simply, after the small kiss.

"Love you, too. That's why that smile just about knocked me out."

She took a page from Rick's operational manual and tried to inject a bit of humor in the suddenly serious heavy conversation. "How about if I promise to keep smiling at you, but save the bear claws for special occasions or a once-in-a-while treat. Do you know what would happen to my waistline if I ate bear claws every day?"

"Are you trying to tell me there would be more of you for me to love?" The smile was starting to creep back to his face.

"A LOT more."

"We could just work harder at some couples aerobic activity to help you burn the calories," he told her, raising one eybrow suggestively.

"Oh, you mean like a couples ballroom dancing class? Or couples kickboxing?" she asked innocently.

"I'm thinking of a couples activity where you don't need any special equipment," he said, leaning forward and kissing her neck under her ear, "or shoes," he kissed her collarbone, "or even clothes," he finished as he kissed the middle of her chest right above where the sheet left off.

"Couples naked mud wrestling?" she suggested, winding both arms around his shoulders, causing the sheet to fall and puddle around her waist.

He raised his face back up to hers and looked into her eyes, where she could now see the familiar glint of humor in them. "Couples naked some kind of wrestling."

"I think I like that sport," she said right before their lips met for a leisurely kiss. But before things could get out of hand, she pulled away. "Did I smell coffee?" she prompted.

He rose slightly and turned toward the tray, and she sat back against the headboard of the bed, propping her back on the pillows and pulling the sheet up to cover her again. He handed her both cups of coffee, and set the plate with the bear claw on top of the blanket on her lap before gently crawling across her, being careful not to jostle her hands holding the coffee cups.

After he was seated next to her and was holding his own mug of coffee, he eyed the sheet that she had tucked up over her chest again. "You didn't _have_ to pull the sheet back up, you know."

She glanced at his playful pout and rolled her eyes. "Really, Rick. I'm not going to sit here and drink coffee and eat a bear claw with absolutely nothing covering me. I'm still smarting a little from the beach episode last night with that other couple. I've been pretty much naked-and with you-for the last, what? Ten hours or so? Isn't that enough?"

He looked like he was going to say something really profound, but then stopped himself and said simply, "No."

She rolled her eyes again. "Tough."

She reached for the bear claw and tried to ignore the puppy-dog face from the Master of Pout. Changing the subject away from the level of her nakedness, she asked him, "So where and when did you get this bear claw anyway? You couldn't have gone out anywhere. We were pretty much wrapped around each other all night." She looked at him sideways. "_Please_ don't tell me that you had it delivered." That just seemed way too 'out there', even for Castle-having baked goods delivered.

"Of course not. When I was out shopping yesterday, I found a really nice little bakery. I picked up a few things."

"Where's the rest of it, then? I didn't see anything."

"I hid it all."

"Define all."

He took a deep breath, and then closed his eyes as he listed everything. "A chocolate cake, another couple of bear claws, a loaf of french bread, some donuts _with sprinkles_," he raised his eyebrows at that, also opening his eyes and looking right at her, obviously being very proud of himself for snagging donuts with sprinkles. He looked up in concentration as he continued, "two chocolate eclairs and..." he paused for a few moments, lips pursed, as he struggled to remember. "Oh yeah! A half-dozen of these really good looking snowflake cupcakes."

"Snowflake cupcakes? What the hell is a snowflake cupcake? And when in the _world_ are we going to eat all of that?" she asked incredulously.

"Umm...over the next few days?"

"All of that over the next few days? You really _do_ want more of me to love. I think I'm gaining weight just thinking about all of that."

"Don't worry, I'll help."

"You'd better! So why did you hide it anyway?"

"I didn't want to give you everything yesterday. I thought I should save something for today. I thought that might be too much."

"So you saved _baked goods_? The one thing that's actually perishable? You gave me a camera with enough bells and whistles to outfit a cruise ship, diamond earrings, then you freaking _proposed_ to me with a drop-dead gorgeous diamond ring, and you're worrying about giving me some _donuts_? Really, Castle, _donuts_?"

At her words, he broke out into a smile. "You really think the ring is drop-dead gorgeous?" he asked her eagerly, all ideas of baked goods forgotten.

Later, she would file this moment in under the label 'Classic ADD'. Right then, though, instead of replying verbally, she she just shook her head in resignation as she closed her eyes and leaned her head down to rest her forehead on the fingertips of her free hand, as Rick sat next to her, grinning stupidly because she thought his ring was drop-dead gorgeous.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"You really expect me to sit in this thing-no, wait a minute-you expect me to _hang_ from this thing and go hundreds of feet in the air?"

After a morning spent sunning themselves, playing with the frisbee and looking for new shells around their section of the beach, Rick announced he had plans for the afternoon. They drove to one of the public beaches, and he looked around until he spotted a large boat that had partially run up on the beach. He led them over to the boat, which had "Captiva Ed's High Flying Adventures" emblazoned on the side of the boat. When she saw the boat and realized what he had planned for them, she stopped dead in the sand.

Rick was taking her parasailing.

She eyed up the boat and the contraption that was rigged up in the back of it. There was a horizontal pole with a parachute attached to it, and the pole had a couple of little swing types of things hanging from it.

"Come on, Kate. I know you've done a lot crazier things than this. This is nothing. Geez, Kate," he lowered his voice as he said his next few words, as if he were embarrassed to point it out, "there are senior citizens who do this."

"It just doesn't look terribly...stable. It's just so open."

"Well, no, you're not inside anything. You're flying! Out in the open...that's the _point_. What's the problem? You do things more dangerous than this all the time."

"But they're calculated risks. I have training. This is going hundreds of feet in the air hanging from a few straps of nylon. It's like...trying to rappel down the Empire State Building wearing a harness made of overcooked spaghetti."

"Kate, think about it. Do you really think they'd be in business anymore if people they'd ever maimed or killed people?"

"There's always a first time."

"Kate, Alexis went parasailing when she was twelve. And she lived to see high school! Imagine that!" he said with mock astonishment.

"I'm so happy for her," she replied dryly.

"Think about it this way...if anyone falls, it'll be me. I'm heavier. So you'd be perfectly fine."

"Oh, good, Rick," she told him sarcastically. "That's really reassuring. I get to watch you plummet hundreds of feet to your death while I'm safely ensconsed in my harness, watching the whole thing."

"Fine, then. If I plummet to my death, you can undo your harness and plummet with me."

She glared at him.

"Kate, I never took you for a chicken."

"I'm not chicken, I'm just...cautious."

"Yeah, right. But, fine. You're forcing me to bring out the big guns." With that, he took a couple of steps back from her. He inhaled a deep breath and put his arms out to his sides as he did a little all-over shake. Then he bent over and started walking like a chicken and clucking loudly. His head jutted back and forth as he clucked and strutted, and he even flapped his bent arms a few times like wings. She might have admitted (although it was somewhat scary to fully admit it) that he did a pretty good chicken imitation, if not for the fact that having him do a chicken imitation on a crowded beach in front of her ranked right up there in terms of her more embarrassing moments. When she saw people starting to look-his clucking was quite loud and expressive, to say the least-she walked over to him and grabbed his ear. "Rick! Stop that!"

He stopped because of the pressure on his ear, but still managed to ask, "Tell me you'll go. Because believe me, this is only the smallest of my big guns." He put on his best puppy dog face, and followed it with an original Castle smile meant to disarm even the greatest skeptic or enemy. "Come on, Kate, just give it a try. Give it a chance. I know you'll have fun."

She glared at him again, but relented when she couldn't resist his teasing grin any longer. And between the Bieber birthday serenade and the alligator incident, she did believe his implication that he would do worse and she knew he could probably come up with pretty creative ways to embarrass her.

She planted herself in front of him and poked her finger into his chest threateningly. "Fine, Castle, I'll go, but so help me, if I fall out of that thing and die, I will hunt you down and make you pay, even if I have to do it from another dimension."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Thirty minutes later, life jacket on, she was sitting in her harness as the boat sped along through the waves and the parachute billowed behind and above them. Rick was sitting to her right and was grinning ear to ear. He kept telling her how cool this was. She was reserving judgment.

They cable that attached them to the boat was slowly being let out as they flew further and further away from the boat and rose higher in the air. Kate could feel herself drifting in the wind; drifting a little too much, if you asked her. She didn't really want to look down, despite Rick's almost constant dialog that always started with the words, "Kate, look at..."

As she rose higher, Rick kept trying to make her look at him. She ignored him a few times out of spite, but then when she finally did, she saw that he'd somehow smuggled her new camera along for the ride. He snapped a picture of her before she could do anything. "God, Rick, did you have to do that?" she somewhat shouted at him over the sound of the wind. "And don't you dare drop my new camera!"

He held up his hand with the camera. "Strap around the wrist, see? And for the picture, I'd prefer one with you smiling, actually," he told her. "So say cheese!"

But instead of giving her a smile, she stuck out her tongue at him, a sight which was captured perfectly by the camera.

Then he started swinging a little bit in his hanging harness. She ignored him as she watched the cable still being let out, watching them get farther from the boat and higher above the water. But then he started to try to twist his harness like he wanted to twirl around, which made her look at him as if he had a death wish. "Castle, will you STOP that? This is not a playground swingset! Do you know how high up we are?"

He looked at her, but he kept swinging. "I'll stop swinging if you take your eyes off the boat and look at the view around you," he bribed.

"Castle!"

"Just look around," he reasoned again.

"Fine!" But when she took her eyes off the boat and the harness, and looked around, she found that yes, she was high up, but the view was spectacular. The sunshine glinted off the waves, and she could see mini-whitecaps rolling here and there as larger waves broke as they rolled toward shore. She looked at the all of the beachgoers down below, and she could tell where the public beaches were by the volume of people there versus some of the other areas surrounding more private houses. As she watched the shore, she caught sight of a familiar-looking house with a wraparound porch on the upper story, and a pool and hot tub on the back deck by the beach. Forgetting that she was determined to hang on, she pointed excitedly toward the house and said "Castle, there's our house! Take a picture of it!" Glad that she appeared to be forgetting about her determination to not enjoy the ride, he did as he was told.

She spent the rest of the ride becoming totally enamored of the view from so high, and all that could be seen. They managed to see some dolphins jumping in the distance, although Rick couldn't time the jumps well enough to get a picture of them. She marveled at the sheer volume of what they could see of the nature preserve, which looked, from their vantage point, like a vast undeveloped forest.

After they'd turned around and started 'sailing' back in the direction from which they'd come, she eventually became aware that she was descending; the cable was pulling them back in. She was surprised to find that she was almost a little sad that their ride was coming to an end, now that she had finally let herself enjoy it. When they got a little bit behind the boat, though, she noticed that the boat was hardly moving at all. "Did they run out of gas or something? Why aren't they moving?" she asked Rick. He just smiled at her in response, and she got a funny feeling in her stomach that he knew something that she didn't. And she _really_ hated that feeling.

They floated lower and lower toward the water. Oh, my gosh, she was strapped into this contraption! She was hoping fervently that it wasn't going to sink and take her and Rick along with it, despite the fact that they were wearing lifejackets. As she watched the water come up to meet her, she instinctively curled up her legs. It didn't help, because she and Rick kept sinking more and more toward the gentle ocean waves. But just as they met the water and the waves splashed the lower halves of their bodies, drenching them, the boat sped up again, with the parachute catching the air with the added speed and lifting them up away from the water once again.

With her bottom half now soaked from the surprise dip in the water, she glanced over at Rick to find him grinning. "You knew? Now my butt is all wet! Why didn't you warn me? You..." she trailed off as she tried to lean over to punch him on his arm. Since they were just a little too far apart, she only succeeded in making her own harness swing from side to side as she kept trying to reach him.

"Hey, I tried to tell you to wear something else."

"I asked you if we were going swimming and you said no! So if we're not going swimming, why would normal clothes NOT be okay?"

"Kate, might I point out to you that we did _not_ just go swimming?" He shrugged. "I tried to warn you. Anyway, we just took a little dip."

"Dip, schmip. I got wet. And you _knew_ I would get wet, didn't you?"

"I already told you that Alexis went parasailing when she was twelve. Do you think I just sent her up in the air all by herself? Besides, it's kind of a standard practice. You go parasailing, you get dipped. At least you didn't get dunked."

"Yes, I should be soooo grateful," she said sarcastically. "Tell that to my wet butt."

"I'd love to," he joked.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After they were-safely-loaded back onto the boat (much to Kate's relief) and made their way onto terra firma, they headed back to the house so, as Kate demanded, she could change out of her wet shorts. Even though she eventually had fun on the parasailing ride, she couldn't quite admit that to Rick yet. And of course, she had to punish him for not warning her ahead of time about the little end-of-ride dip that she was going to be treated to. So she chose the best form of torture for him that she could think of.

She told him that she wanted to spend some time in on the beach, relaxing, looking for shells, maybe boogie boarding. She also told him that she would meet him down at the beach, and could he please grab all of the shelling equipment and maybe a bottle of water for her? She said it so innocently and sincerely that he never batted an eyelash.

So when she walked down the steps to the beach and sauntered slowly past him wearing the red string bikini, she knew she'd scored a direct hit with her revenge tactic when she heard his sharp intake of breath, followed by his hiss of "Holy Mother of God, Beckett! It's broad daylight! What are you doing wearing THAT?"

She turned partway around so he could see her from a tantalizing side angle. "Well, gee, Rick, I wanted to get _wet_, not just from a little dip," she told him, enjoying the look in his eyes at the double entendre. "So I thought I'd change into something more appropriate. For getting _wet_."

And with those words, combined with a last, lusty look at him, she made her way down into the surf. She leaned down, making sure that her bikini top had gotten fully soaked from the waves. Then she straightened up again and looked at him. "Coming, Rick?" she asked him in a playfully sexy voice.

As he gazed upon her with the wet suit molding ever contour of her body and the bright sunlight glinting off of her wet skin, his only thought was "Probably sooner than you think."

* * *

_**I didn't know entirely where I was going to go with this chapter, but I hope you found it entertaining even though it wasn't as...intense, shall we say, as the last chapter.**_

_**I did worry about portraying Beckett as being hesitant about the parasailing ride. I didn't want to make her be afraid, per se, just skeptical and cautious. I couldn't have just have her give in and let Castle do anything he wanted, right? And she generally does have to be cautious about most of Castles schemes, right?**_

_**Anyway, thanks again to all of those story subscribers still reading, and welcome to all of the newbies that dared to brave the now-48 chapters!**_

_**Thoughts are always appreciated!**_

_**ETA: One thought about the ADD reference toward the end-it is in no way intended to malign or poke fun at anyone who has ADD. I have a mild case of ADD. Made studying and reading textbooks really hard for me in college, and I didn't even know there was such a thing (for adults) back then. My oldest kid also has a mild case...focusing issues only, like me. But, I've found that one of the other tendencies is being more creative, so while there are bad points, there are also good points. And I like to think that because of this, I can better capture some of that wacky, subject changing, go-off-on-a-tangent characteristic of Castle maybe a little bit better. **_


	49. Chapter 49

_**I just started writing this last night after I posted Ch10 of Blizzard. (And don't worry, I'll update that soon.) I thought I would need some time to work on this chapter, and then lo and behold, my fingers couldn't stop flying over the keyboard. I really, really did not intend to write more smut. Really. Truly. So if you're sick of smut, then don't read this (or scroll past the first section break). Would you believe that when I started this fic, I honestly never intended to have ANY smut in this fic? And now, look at me. Should I be ashamed at how smutty I've become?**_

_**Well, at least this is humorous smut. Somewhat. I think. I hope. **_

_**The usual disclaimer: don't own anyone. **_

* * *

At her sexy playful banter, he was instantly aroused. Or maybe it was merely the sight of her in that suit that did it. Or maybe it was remembering what had happened between them the last time she wore that suit. Whatever it was, he was certain that he was going to embarrass himself if he sat and looked at her much longer. As the days wore on and they were together more and more, he would have expected to become more immune to her charms, be better able to control himself and his reaction to her. But right now, the opposite was happening. He was finding, at least now, that he had no self-control. Zilch. Nada. Zippo. He felt like he was in danger of becoming like the kid in that movie he saw once who kept losing it whenever the girl did the slightest provocative thing to him. The girl was going to sleep with him, she was a sure thing, but he couldn't hold out long enough to actually consummate the act. Rick felt like that kid now. And man, he was too old for that. That would be so embarrassing.

She was cunning and devious, that one, and she knew how to exploit his biggest weakness. _Her. _Or rather, his stunning lack of self-control when faced with the sight of her in any sort of a two piece bikini. Wet. Oh, hell. He was supposed to be calming himself down, and then he has to go and think of that word. Wet. And the many, many images and sensations it evoked when it was used to describe one Kate Beckett. And with those many images filtering through his brain, he did the only thing he could think of doing to preserve his dignity. And his sanity.

He ran.

He ran straight into the surf and dove through a wave. He would have uttered a few choice words at that moment if he could have, because the force of the dive did not feel good on a certain engorged body part south of his waistline. But even that still wasn't enough to make him stop. When he felt himself come to the top of the water, he broke out swimming in the fastest freestyle that he could possibly swim. He kept his eyes closed against the bite of the saltwater, but the unfortunate result of that was that images of Kate in the bikini kept dancing behind his closed eyelids.

He swam faster, hoping he could outrun them. So far, though, it wasn't working.

Kate, when he had run past her and dove into the wave, felt her jaw drop. She thought for sure he'd come down to join her in the water, they'd tease each other a little bit, and then they'd go up to the house for an afternoon delight. Never did she think that he would...go for a swim? She shook her head...she's standing here, wet, in a very skimpy red string bikini, and he decides to go for a swim. She looked out at him. He was swimming like there was a shark chasing him. She threw back her head and laughed.

Judging by what had happened during the first part of the vacation where he kept trying to avoid her, she suspected that her little tease had worked better than she'd intended on him. He'd reverted back into retreat mode. Since the man had just given her an engagement ring less than twenty-four hours before, she suspected that he was in retreat mode because her plan for revenge had worked better than she had intended. At least she didn't have to worry about him not being interested, she thought with a smile.

She decided to swim out after him, if she could make it that far; if Rick didn't slow down soon, she'd have to call the coast guard to pick him up. She took a look around the beach as she waded out into the water, and found that blessedly, their little stretch of beach was about as deserted as it usually was. She could see people, sure, but there didn't appear to be anyone within 30 or 40 yards on either side of them. Good thing.

As she got out in the surf more, it looked like Rick might finally be slowing down. He'd switched from a crawl type of stroke to something on his front with his face out of the water, although he was still facing the ocean rather than the beach. She swam out to where the water was up to just below her shoulders, and she stopped to watch him. Because of the gradual slope of the bottom, she was actually pretty far away from the shore even though she could still stand up. Now, he still faced out toward the ocean, but he'd switched to laying almost on his back, and he appeared to be paddling in a little bit more toward shore. So she stood there in the waves, jumping with the waves when a big one was washing toward her, and watched his dark head come toward her slowly. She adjusted her position in the water so she was always directly behind him, but she still didn't call out any greeting. When he was finally within reaching distance, she let her arms reach out and snake over his shoulders in the start of an embrace.

To say he wasn't expecting her to be there would be an understatement. At her touch, he screamed and started flailing his arms and legs, trying to simultaneously right himself and get away. He was so lost in thought that initially, he truly had no idea that she was the one who was behind him. His very first impression was that she was either a fish or some sort of ocean plant that had washed over him.

Something in her gurgly admonishment of "Castle!" eventually got through to him, because he turned around and found himself facing a now thoroughly drenched Beckett. It was ironic to think that he escaped her because of how she looked a little bit wet (along with the sensual use of the word), and now he was responsible for putting her even more further into that state. Once he realized it was her, however, standing right in front of him, in that red bikini, he started unconsciously backing away from her again. Because despite his swim, he and his body were still very much under the wicked spell of Kate and her devilishly red bikini, and seeing her that close to him again (especially in the ocean, where the whole red bikini thing started) did nothing for his raging libido.

She saw him retreating and pushed forward in the waves to wind her arm around his neck securely. "You're not going anywhere, Mr. Castle," she told him authoritatively, but seductively as she pressed her chest to his.

He groaned from the contact. "Kate, I...you have to let go of me. I have no control right now and I can't do you here in broad daylight, even though that's what I want to do right now more than anything. There are...people...around. Kate, please..." he pleaded in a strained voice. "Just...let me calm down and then we can go up to the house and do this right."

She didn't release her hold from his neck. In fact, she rubbed her breasts over his chest just a little bit more. But then her free hand reached down in between them and found its way into the waistband of his swim trunks, where she circled his hard length with her hand.

"Christ, Kate! I can't take this! I told you..." He was panting the words now, straining to try to hold himself back. She loved the effect she had on him, and it was empowering to know that she could apparently make him lose control as fast as he could take her to the edge.

She nibbled on his earlobe as she began to pump him with her hand. "I think you should just follow your own advice, Rick, and go with it," she whispered seductively in his ear in between nibbles. She used her fingers to press a rhythm into his rod, even as the rest of her hand continued its pumping motion. She briefly let go so she could circle her thumb and forefinger around the sensitive head, causing him to moan "Oh, man...Beckett!" And when she sensed that he was about there, she gripped him fully in her hand again, beginning to pump him relentlessly. He could do nothing except bury his face in her shoulder and utter some gutteral moans as she pumped his release from him.

His ragged breathing slowly slowed, and he looked up at her. "God, Beckett, why did you do that?"

"You didn't like it?" she asked coyly.

"I think it's obvious that I did. Very much. But I kind of like to do that type of thing together...you know, you and me."

"Uh, Rick? I was right here. In fact, I'm still here," she told him, and lightly squeezed his now-slackening male organ.

"You know what I mean. It's just...I feel so...so _juvenile_ for not being able to hold out.

"Trust me, Rick, there was nothing juvenile about what I was feeling down there."

"And what about you? You didn't...I couldn't even..."

"Oh, don't worry, Writer Monkey, I'm counting on your impressive recovery time coming in handy within oh, about half an hour. Or less. Now we're going to take a nice leisurely swim back to the beach, we're going to dry off, and then we're going to go in the house and we're going to have our wicked ways with each other. Can you handle that?"

He groaned. "I hope my recovery time can live up to your expectations. Because right now, after that, I feel like I need to rest."

"Rest later. Right now, I neeeeed you," she told him, drawing out the word to accentuate it. "I'm very, _very_ needy, Rick. Do you think you can help me satisfy those...needs?"

"God, Beckett...you're evil."

Less than half an hour later, he was thinking that his recovery time was indeed impressive. Of course, a lot of that had to do with his inspiration, who was totally irresistable. And because of his lack of stamina before, he found that he had amazing amount of stamina this time, and Kate was reaping the rewards. First she reaped them as he pushed her against the wall by the back door as soon as they were in the house, and then he carried her over to the couch where minutes later, she reaped those rewards again. And after they both rolled off the couch together, she rolled on top of him as he laid on the floor, and rode him with abandon as they both reaped the benefits one last time that afternoon.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

A short time later, as they both still lay on the floor, relaxing and close to falling asleep despite the location, Rick found his mind drifting. It was drifting back to that first phone call to Alexis after they had declared their feelings to each other, when Alexis had said that their trip was kind of like a honeymoon. "It actually is," he murmured aloud, sleepily.

"What's actually what?" Kate asked, not understanding what he meant.

"Our trip...Alexis said it's like our honeymoon."

"Mmmm..." she responded automatically. And then when his words really registered in her brain, especially the words 'Alexis' and 'honeymoon', she sat up, her heart beating wildly, and shouted "WHAT?"

Rick was startled at her movement and her words, and any semblance of relaxing into sleep vanished. "Geez, Kate...a little warning, please? My heart can't take much more."

"Your heart? You all but tell me that you're telling your teenage daughter what's going on down here between us and you expect me to be calm about that? I'm already worried enough about how she'll take this whole thing when we get home!"

"Wait..." he said, sitting up himself. "Just wait a minute. I never said anything to her about...this," he told her, gesturing between the two of them with a sheepish look on his face. "God, Kate, give me some credit. That would be just...no." He gave an all-over body shudder. "I don't want to go there. Blech. But anyway, it was days ago, earlier in the week after I'd told her that we were together now, and that we were serious. Alexis asked me how long we'd be staying down here. And _she_ said it-that we'd probably want to stay as long as we could because it was kind of like a honeymoon. It really threw me for a loop at the time."

Hearing his explanation, she breathed a little easier. She leaned her head down on his shoulder. "I bet it did. Are you sure you didn't say anything...else?"

"Honest." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "But it just occurred to me, you know...before, that this really _is_ kind of like a honeymoon."

"Castle, we're not married." Just saying the word gave her a little nervous feeling in her stomach.

"I said _like_ a honeymoon. Come here." He grabbed a pillow off the couch and put it under his head, and then laid down on it and pulled her down with him. "We're in private, we're boinking like bunnies, at all hours of the day and night, and in very interesting places, I might add. And I can't seem to keep my hands off you. And it's getting worse. The more I have you, the more I want you."

She hated to admit it, but he was right. This was a perfect honeymoon, except for the small fact that they weren't married. And somewhere, some voice in the back of her mind whispered _'yet'_.

She mentally tried to squash that voice by going for some humor. "You sure you're not popping some little blue pills when I'm not looking?"

He groaned. "Kate, it was bad enough out in the ocean when I had the boner of the century and no self control. I think at this point, even a half of a little blue pill would kill me."

She laughed and kissed his chest, and made it a point to banish the word 'honeymoon'-and all that it implied-from her mind for the time being.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Later, after she'd showered the saltwater off of her and had dressed in a very demure t-shirt and capri pants (no sense in torturing the man any further today...she didn't know if _she_ could take any more, much less him), she found him downstairs typing on his laptop. He looked pretty intent on what he was doing, so she decided not to disturb him. She found the book that she'd been reading...whenever that was, and she went outside to one of the lounge chairs on the wraparound balcony upstairs. But just as she sat down, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.

She flipped it open and answered "Hi Esposito."

"Hey. I'm not disturbing...anything, am I?" The implication of what he meant by 'anything' was clear, although she was surprised that he'd dared to ask her. She was going to have to be a little scarier when she got back to work. But what was funny was that if he'd called a little earlier in the afternoon, he really _would _have been interrupting the very thing that he was hinting at. Stifling a laugh, she intentionally ignored the implication when she answered him.

"No, just reading a book in the shade outside, while the palm trees waft in the gentle ocean breeze," she tried to lay it on a little thick.

"You're mean, Beckett. We just got another inch of snow this morning."

"So what's up, Esposito? I'm sure you didn't call me to hear about the palm trees or the beautiful sunny warm weather."

"No. We're waiting on some information and I had a few minutes, so I thought you'd want to hear about the body that we caught." She could hear by the tone in his voice that they'd gotten a weird one.

"Oh, no. Is Castle going to want to be in on this?"

"Probably. But you can tell him. Are you ready for this?"

"Sure."

"It was a wood chipper."

"A wood chipper?"

"Yeah, you know, feed in a piece of wood, out comes mulch and sawdust...or in this case, feed in body parts, and out comes body mulch."

"In _Manhattan?_" She didn't want to be, but she was intrigued.

"Well, there is Central Park..."

"And they do have trees there, and mulch..." she trailed off. "But this is winter. You don't mulch anything in the winter."

"True, and the chipper was in a warehouse. Actually, outside of a warehouse."

"You said it was in Central Park!"

"No, _you_ assumed it was in Central Park. I merely brought up Central Park as a place with a potential use for a wood chipper."

She rolled her eyes. "So...any leads?"

"Beckett, we don't even know if we have a male or female vic yet."

"No ID conveniently laying around, huh?"

"Not a chance. Not even a dumpster around for Ryan to go diving into." He sounded a little disappointed in that fact.

"So, not much for Lanie to do, huh?" she said sarcastically. She knew that wasn't the case at all.

"Our ME is currently sifting through various pieces of mangled vic, trying to see what she can piece together. Seems that the chipper wasn't in tip top form, so it left more...pieces than a well-functioning chipper would. First they had to get it all back to the lab. She's been at this for hours. But you're right, she's not too happy right now. Heck, she hasn't been happy since she..." he trailed off all of a sudden.

"Since what, Esposito?" she prompted somewhat menacingly, letting him know he'd better finish his thought.

"Since she found out about your new guy. That Dave guy."

Kate was speechless for a minute. Lanie was upset about the Dave business, still upset? "Esposito, that makes no sense. I've dated guys all the time and she's never gotten upset about anyone before. Why Dave? Why now?"

"Ahh...look, I've said too much. Never mind."

"Esposito!" she warned.

"Okay, look. Lanie...you know how she likes to be right."

"Yeah..."

"So, it's simple. She's always thought that you and Castle would get together. So when he took you down there...you know. Then when she found out about the other guy..."

"...she had to admit that she was wrong about me and Castle." It was weird for Kate to say those words, but she had to keep up the pretense, at least for now. "She's my friend, but she really needs to stop worrrying about my love life so much."

"But she's not, Beckett. She's just pissed because she wasn't right about you two. Like I said, the woman loves to be right. As for the new guy...well, he's good with us if he's good for you."

Kate was touched by the show of support in the simple words. And what he said about Lanie did make sense. Which was why she was being punked in the first place. She would have been able to see it herself, if she'd been with her, but she wasn't so she was grateful for Esposito's interpretation. "Thanks, Esposito. He is good for me. Really good." But it was Rick's face that flew into her mind as she said the words. "Hey, I'll tell Castle about Chip. Let me know what you find out, huh?"

"Will do. Say hi to Castle for me."

She disconnected the call and put her phone back in her pocket. She thought back the conversation with Esposito, specifically about Lanie. She loved her friend, but Esposito did have her pegged...she wanted to be right. And if she wasn't right, she went on a rant for a while, although it was almost always a case of her being upset more with herself than with anyone else.

Then another thought struck her. Esposito seemed to know an awful lot about the good doctor's mood and motivations. Hmmm...this could be interesting. She and Castle would have some interesting dinnertime conversation tonight. She was wondering if perhaps she and Rick weren't the only ones who were keeping some secrets. And with a smile on her face, she forgot all about her intention to read and went to find Rick.

_**

* * *

**_

Well, folks...there you go. I know a lot of you wanted to see what happened with Kate's little plan for revenge. And I know some people have thought that the Lanie/Esposito/Ryan hiatus lasted long enough and you needed a little bit more of them, so I tried to accommodate that here, along with some tidbits of a nice, gruesome, Beckett-style case.

_**Hope you enjoyed it! Let me know!**_

_**Now I have a date with a Blizzard. ;-)**_


	50. Chapter 50

_**Chapter 50...wow!**_

_**No smut in this chapter, but I hope you'll all read it anyway. :) Really, this is just a little filler chapter. Not sure if I 100% like it, but it'll work. For those of you who are wondering, we have one more day left of the vacation, and then they head back to reality. So if anyone has anything they'd really like to see them do for their last day, let me know. I won't make any promises, but I'll consider ideas. **_

_**By the way, they will get back to NYC before I end the story...I know a lot of you have been asking about that.**_

_**Enjoy!**_

_**Disclaimer: Don't own Castle or any of the characters.**_

* * *

"I suppose you want to go back now just so you can figure out who the woodchipper guy is." Kate had told Rick about Esposito's call and the case, and she watched his eyes light up with morbid curiosity as she relayed the information about the woodchipper vic. They were sitting on the back deck, eating their dinner by the pool.

"No, but man, I really hope they don't solve it before we get back."

She pointed her fork at him over her chicken parmesan. "You'd better hope they do, because the case will be so cold by then that we probably wouldn't have much luck solving it ourselves anyway."

Just then, a thought struck him and he leaned forward in his chair. "I thought Esposito said they didn't know the gender. But you said 'woodchipper guy'."

"It was 'guy' in the general sense. I'm not going to say 'it' or 'thing', Rick. But no, apparently they didn't know the gender."

"What about the clothing?"

"Probably mulched with the rest of the vic," she said offhandedly as she took a bite.

He got a thoughtful look on his face. She knew that look. He usually got it right before he said something that was really off the wall, but was his usual style of 'thinking out of the box'. "But you said the chipper wasn't working right...that it left more 'chunks o' vic' than normal. Well, maybe it left chunks o' clothes too. Like a..."

"...clothing tag! Which might give us..."

"...the style of clothing, so we could figure out if it's men's or women's clothing, or..."

"...at the very least, the rough size of the vic and what type of clothes he or she was wearing."

They sat and dumbly smiled at each other over the table, both thinking some form of 'we still got it'. If either of them had wondered if they'd be able to go back to their familiar working relationship after their personal relationship had moved forward by light years, those worries had just been put to rest. They were still in sync, now they were just in sync in more ways than one.

Then Rick glanced down at his plate and the smile left his face. "You know, this...uh...conversation is really kind of...uh, not good for the dinner table."

Kate looked down at her plate, seeing the remaining chunks of chicken she'd cut up, along with the noodles and the red sauce. She suddenly didn't feel like eating anymore. Putting down her fork, she told him, "Uh...yeah. Maybe I'll just..." she motioned off toward the house vaguely.

"...go call Lanie. How about some wine?"

"Sure. But make it a white, okay? I don't think a red wine would be a good choice right now."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate called Lanie and filled her in on their theory about the clothing that she and Rick had come up with during dinner. The blood tests from the vic hadn't come back yet, so having another angle to try to determine the gender of their victim was one bright spot, at least. After Lanie promised to keep them informed if their theory led anywhere, she sequed to other topics.

"So how's _Dave_?" The annoyed ME said the name in a less than favorable tone.

Kate was momentarily taken aback by the question, but quickly shifted her mind into punking subversive mode. "Oh, Dave's fine. Great, really."

"Uh _huh_. So if he's so _fine_, then what are you doing having dinner with Castle, huh? Is there trouble in paradise?"

Lanie was on the hunt for some information, and what Esposito had told her earlier was ringing so true. She did _not_ want to be proven wrong in her assumptions.

Kate injected what she knew was an annoyingly cheery tone into her voice. "No! Not at allllll..." she told her, drawing out the last word for effect. "Dave just had...other committments tonight, so Castle and I were having dinner together. Nothing wrong with that, is there? I mean, we are still staying here in this house together, so we do see each other quite often you know."

But Lanie had latched onto the first part of what Kate had said, about Dave being busy. "Other committments? What could possibly be more important than the woman he's having hot tub orgies with? Huh? Sounds like maybe he's not the dream guy you make him out to be."

Holy...Esposito was right! She really was in a bad mood over this. Kate took a deep breath while she composed in her mind what she wanted to say. She decided direct was good.

"Lanie! What's got you in such a bad mood? And why are you so negative about Dave? You haven't even met him yet!" She knew Lanie, and she knew Lanie absolutely hated to hear when people said she was in a bad mood.

"Hey, I am _not_ in a bad mood!" Yup, Kate knew that would strike a nerve. "I'm just lookin' out for you. Looks like _someone_ has to! I mean, you get hot and heavy with some guy practically right after you met him, and then he ditches you right after that for some other 'committment'?" she tried to justify her position, saying the last word with derision.

"Lanie, not that it's any of your business, but he's here with his...family." Whew! She'd almost said 'wife'. That would have _so_ not gone over well. "Like some family reunion thing," she ad-libbed. "So he had some dinner that they all had to go to." Then, trying to play up what a wonderful guy Dave was even a little more, she threw a final tidbit out there: "I, personally, thought it was kind of nice that he put some _priority_ on his parents' wedding _anniversary_ dinner with the rest of his _family_. Sorry you don't think so."

The little guilt trip, though improvised, had somewhat of the desired effect on Lanie, but she was still never one to give up on what she thought _should_ happen, at least by the standards of 'The World According to Lanie'. "Fine then. And while he's 'committed', you be sure that you and Castle go have a good time, okay? No sense wasting being in paradise with a hunky millionnaire on some other...Dave thing."

"Lanie..."

"Yeah, I know. Shut up. And I will. But first I have to say...girl, if this guy turns out to be some jerk, then you just better plan on having some hot rebound sex with Castle. We've all been waiting for you to come to your senses for long enough. Especially me."

It felt somewhat odd to suggest it, out loud, but Kate couldn't resist. "Well, until I 'come to my senses', as you put it, why don't you just go have the hot sex with Castle?"

"No thank you, girlie. Castle is all for you. I'm getting all of the hot sex I can han..." she trailed off. Then in a rush of words. "Oh, look at the time. Gotta go! Bye, Kate!"

Kate had never in her life heard Lanie get off the phone so fast. She took the phone away from her ear and looked at the display, which did indeed show that the call had ended. She sat back in the chair and smiled as she bit her bottom lip, thinking that now she was sure that the good doctor was keeping a secret of her own, specifically a hot, brooding, hispanic one.

Rick walked in the room then, carrying two glasses of white wine. He handed her one and asked, "As I was walking in, it sounded like you were hiring me out for hot sex. Pray tell, with whom? Because, you know, I'm taken. Unless you're talking about you...in which case, let's just get at it then," he finished, waggling his eyebrows suggestively, but with a smile on his face so she knew that he was joking.

"Lanie. She's still giving me grief about Dave, although it's quite apparent that Esposito was right. She's quite annoyed that she wasn't proven right about us. I had to improvise when she asked me why I was having dinner with you tonight instead of Dave."

"And?"

"And Dave is at a wedding anniversary party for his parents tonight. You know, the whole family is taking this vacation together?"

"Nice story. Makes him very sympathetic."

"Thank you."

"So why were you telling her to have hot sex with me anyway?"

"Because she wouldn't shut up. But then something veeeeeery interesting happened. As soon as I suggested that she have hot sex with you, she said something about getting all the hot sex she can handle, and then she just got off the phone like there was a fire in the morgue. Didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to her before she hung up."

"She's getting a lot of hot sex? Really? But who..." He trailed off, but then he started nodding as he got a smile on his face.

Together, they both nodded and said "Esposito."

They sipped their wine in companionable silence for a few minutes. "Funny you should mention Dave. He called while you were on the phone with Lanie."

"Oh, really?"

"Yup. Wanted to know if we wanted to play mini-golf tonight."

"Mini-golf?" She smiled. "I haven't played mini-golf in...I don't know how long. Sure."

"Good thing, because I told them sure. They're flying back tomorrow afternoon so they thought they'd see if we were free. Come on, let's get ready. We're supposed to meet them in half an hour."

_**

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**_

And just to clarify, they only had a couple of sips of the wine, so they're okay to drive to the mini-golf place.

_**I know it's short, but thoughts are always appreciated. Thanks!**_


	51. Chapter 51

_**Hey, everyone! A new update...yay! Welcome to all of the new people who have just started reading this fic or have just gotten caught up with it! And a BIG thanks to all of you have reviewed...with this last chapter, this story hit the 1000 review threshold! Yay! Thanks to Reva, who I believe was my 1000th reviewer! Keep 'em coming!**_

_**Hope you enjoy the mini-golf game. It's a bit...unusual.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle or any of the other recognizable things in this story, including Florida. Bummer.**_

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"The point of the game, Rick, is to keep the ball on the course." Dave and Joelle looked at the other couple as Kate argued her point with Rick. He'd started of the game in rather mundane fashion for him, unless you counted the endless jokes with Dave about 'balls'. But he'd quickly started trying more outlandish shots by the second hole. She'd resorted to pinching his ear once, and he'd relented and had been good for the entire third hole. But by the sixth hole, he was trying to get creative by using not just the obstacles on the mini-golf course, but by trying to make wagers with Dave to use other obstacles, like the wall of the man-made cave that they were now in. The two of them were beginning to draw stares from other patrons by their antics, and they weren't polite stares.

"It's a game of obstacles. Why can't I make my own?"

"Because you're not _supposed_ to make your own. That's why you get a penalty stroke. You're just supposed to use the obstacles that are already there."

"Where's the imagination in that? Where's the _fun_ in that?" Rick looked at Dave for confirmation, and he nodded with a smug look on his face.

Kate looked at Dave. "Shut up, Dave."

Dave looked at her as if her remark was an affront to him. "I didn't even say anything," he started, but then his wife whacked his arm and told him "She's right. Shut up, Dave."

Kate looked back at Rick. "Anyway, it's in trying to figure out how to outsmart the course to get a hole in one. _Not_ trying to figure out some other way to get the ball in the hole, at the potential harm of beaning some poor person with your 'imaginative' shot. You are SO lucky that man at the last hole was able to duck at the last minute. That was really embarrassing!"

"That guy _should_ be embarrassed! He was wearing plaid shorts with a striped shirt. And he had on dress socks with his tennis shoes!"

"I fail to see where his attire matters."

"Maybe if I'd have hit him it would have knocked some fashion sense into him?"

Kate rolled her eyes, but then she pulled him a bit farther away from Dave and Joelle for more privacy. "It's embarrassing to _me_, Rick," she told him in a lower, somewhat angry voice that he could tell was quite serious. "Really, I love your...your...joie de vivre, but not at the expense of hurting someone else or," she lowered her voice even more as she looked around, "getting us kicked out of here. There's fun, and there's juvenile."

"I'm embarrassing you? Like, really embarrassing you?" He seemed shocked.

"Yes." At her confirmation, his face fell a bit, realizing she was not happy and he was the cause.

"But I embarrassed you with the Bieber thing."

"Yes, but this is...different. That was just...good fun. Yes, it was embarrassing, and yes, I wanted to shoot you, but it didn't hurt anyone or make you look like an ass. Almost hurting some guy with a golf ball because you're messing around with it? It's like what spoiled 12 year olds would do when their parents ditch them for the night. Put it like this: How would you feel if Alexis was the one who was doing what you did?"

She could see from the look on his face that he got the point. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "I'm sorry, Kate," he told her in a contrite voice. " I don't want you to be embarrassed by me. Well, not like that anyway. Bieber imitations, maybe," he finished with a sly grin. Looking at him, she knew she didn't need to belabor the issue anymore. Well, except for one parting instruction. She pointed her finger into his chest. "Keep the ball on the green stuff. Putting only. Got it?"

"Spoilsport." He gave her a pouty face, but they knew it was now in good fun.

Dave leaned close to Rick and said in a stage whisper, "She's really a stickler for the rules, isn't she? Maybe I'll have to reconsider her being my fake girlfriend." Rick nodded in mock sympathy with a glare at Kate.

Joelle and Kate both rolled their eyes at that. Then they picked up their balls and walked to the next hole. Of course, based on their constant stream of jokes, Kate couldn't resist telling the boys, "Hey, guys, don't forget your _balls_," as she sauntered away with Joelle, laughing, toward the next hole.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick was, for the most part, better for the remainder of the course. He did still attempt to put his own flair on the game, of course; one time even turning the club around, bending down and using the handle end to shoot the ball like a pool cue. However, it wasn't the kind of thing that would garner them any more than an amused stare from their fellow players. Kate had brought her new camera and thought it was comical enough to take a picture of it. And they kept the game going so nobody else had ask to play through their hole.

When they reached the 18th hole, they even had to wait a bit for what looked like a set of older grandparents who were evidently treating their grandchildren to a game of mini-golf. Rick had remarked about them earlier, since they'd been following them from hole to hole for most of their time. The little boy looked to be about six, and the peanut of a little girl looked like she couldn't be more than three. The little girl is the one who captured Rick's attention first; she had long red hair and bright blue eyes. When he first saw her, he looked at her wistfully, and Kate suspected he was remembering Alexis when she was small. She loved watching him when he talked about his daughter, or thought about her, as he did then. They used the lull to pose for a few pictures with Kate's camera. But afterwards, just sitting on the bench waiting for the last hole free up, the four of them were having another conversation when they registered the noise coming from the end of the hole. The little carrot-top was crying, sobbing really, and the grandmother didn't really seem to be succeeding at consoling her. Rick, unable to resist, walked over toward her. As he walked over, he pulled out his wallet and took something out of it.

He looked at the grandmother and silently asked her permission to talk to the child. The grandmother, not having very much luck, simply shrugged her shoulders in an okay. Rick bent down by the little girl. "Hi, sweetie. I'm Rick. What's your name?"

Surprised by the big man who was kneeling down at her height, she stopped crying, but was still hiccuping a bit. She didn't look scared, though; she merely looked intrigued by the newcomer. "Ava," she replied softly.

"Well, Ava, I saw you before and I wanted to show you something. I have a little girl at home who looks just like you. Here's her picture. Her name is Alexis." He held the picture out for her to see. It was one of his favorite pictures of Alexis, from when she was about four, and he still carried it around. Ava didn't need to know she wasn't a little girl anymore. "Do you think she looks like you?"

"Her top is lellow! I's like lellow!" Ava said enthusiastically, in an adorable little-girl version of the English language.

Rick could see from her bright yellow stretch pants and her yellow and orange striped top that she spoke the truth. It was obvious her grandmother was about to translate, so Rick just said, "Yellow is the best color, isn't it?" Ava nodded with enthusiasm. Her grandmother closed her mouth again, certain that the man could understand the fast gibberish that she, herself, had problems understanding sometimes. "Bananas are yellow too. Do you like bananas? I _love_ bananas." The little girl nodded enthusiastically again.

"So, Ava, when I came over here," he said softly, "I saw all of these tears on your pretty face. Was something making you sad? Because I got sad, too, when I saw your tears, so I wanted to see if I could help make you happy."

The tiny little girl took his hand and led him over to where the ball went for the last hole. The last hole in mini-golf courses generally never returned the ball to the player; it was usually some elaborate maze or game where if the ball landed in a certain spot, the player won a free game. This hole was no different. It was an elaborate maze where the ball fell and bounced through a series of pegs that changed its course on the way down, to eventually land in one of several bins. It was like the Plinko game on 'The Price is Right.' Only one of the bins-a very small one-netted the golfer a free game. but that wasn't what Ava had been upset at. Somehow, Ava's golf ball-her bright yellow golf ball-had become stuck, precariously balanced on one of the pegs.

Ava let go of Rick's hand and pointed to the ball. "My lellow ball is 'tuck. I wannit back." Rick knew this was a hard concept for a tiny child to understand...she gets to whack around a pretty colored ball for a while, and then all of a sudden, she whacks it into a hole and it disappears. And she doesn't get it back. A small Alexis had even shed some tears her first time or two when she didn't get the ball back after the mini-golf game. At first, she thought she'd done something wrong, and after that, she just got sad that the pretty ball was taken away from her. He'd always wished they could figure out a different way to do it, so that small children who got accustomed to picking up the ball for the first 17 holes wouldn't feel bad when the their ball was 'stolen' during the 18th hole.

He went over to look at the hole, and he got an idea. He bent down on the fake green turf and leaned onto the ramp that led to the maze. The maze was covered with plexiglass, so people could see where their golf balls went, but couldn't get at them. But there was an opening where the ball went into the maze, and Rick thought he could reach the ball for the little girl to restore a smile to that sweet little face.

Kate was watching the whole exchange between Rick and the little red-headed angel, puzzled at first when he went over to her, and she got up and walked closer to them in time to hear their conversation. Rick was so good with her! She seemed to trust him right away. She could tell that he had a soft spot for her because of her coloring and how she must have reminded him of Alexis. When she got up, Dave and Joelle soon came to follow, and soon everyone was standing around, silently watching the exchange between them. Even little Ava's older brother wasn't saying a word.

So he half-leaned, half-laid on the turf that covered the ramp, and stuck his hand through the opening. Rick reached his hand through the opening in an attempt to reach the ball. It turned out to be a bit of an optical illusion, and he ended up having to brace himself a bit more to be able to reach his arm in the opening a little bit more to be close enough to grab the ball. But he did reach the ball and grabbed it in his fingers with a triumphant cry of "Got it!" Little Ava clapped her hands and the grandmother looked relieved that she wouldn't have to put up with a crying child any longer.

Then Rick pulled his arm back. Then he did it again, and made a few grunty noises. "Huh," he said, wiggling his arm a few more times, the yellow ball still clasped in his hand. After pulling on the arm another time or two, Rick called to her. "Ah, Kate?"

She walked over and bent down by him. "What?"

"I'm stuck."

Before Kate could say anything, little Ava chimed in, "You stuck too? Jus' like my lellow ball!" Now, it appeared that her concern over the fate of her yellow ball was a thing of the past; now she was quite enthralled with the idea of Rick being stuck.

"Oh, no," the grandmother finally said.

Kate finally spoke, after she rolled her eyes. "Are you kidding me, Rick?"

"I wish I was." After the incident from earlier, he was afraid she was going to get mad at him. So after she just stared at him for a solid ten seconds, he was shocked when she threw back her head and laughed.

"Oh, this is priceless! I have to get a picture of _this_!" And she turned the camera on him and snapped a few quick pictures.

"Are you done having fun yet? Because I'd like to get out of here so I can give Ava her ball back. This isn't exactly the most comfortable position in the world here."

By now, Dave had pushed himself into the mix and was staring at the predicament that Rick had gotten his arm into. He bent down by Rick and began asking him questions. "Can you wiggle it? Or wiggle it and pull it? What if you try to push it in more and then pull it out fast?"

At his comments, Kate whipped her head around to look at Joelle with wide eyes as if to say '_Did he really just say that?_' Looking at an identical expression Joelle's face, she could tell they were both remembering all of the comments that the guys had been making about 'balls' earlier, which put a decidedly off-color spin on Dave's latest comments, even though he hadn't intended them that way. As if on cue, they both broke out in laughter, which earned the stares of not only the two men, but of the grandparents too. And Ava's brother, not wanting to be outside of a joke even though he had no idea what was so funny, started laughing with them in a way that only a 6 year old boy can.

But before Rick could say anything, a young man, obviously an employee of the facility and probably not much out of his teenage years if he was at all, walked up to them. He didn't seem happy about the fact that Rick was stuck, but he also seemed to know exactly what to do. Armed with a screwdriver, he started unscrewing a couple of the screws holding the plexiglass cover in place. When he had two of them loosened sufficiently, he pulled up on the cover, which allowed Rick to free his arm. After he screwed them back in place, he finally spoke.

"You need to leave now, all of you. You're not supposed to try to cheat to get the free game."

"I wasn't cheating!" Rick told him indignantly.

"We get people like you in here all the time. The balls don't get stuck. The people just_ say_ the ball is 'stuck' and that they _had_ to reach in, and then they get stuck like you do. And they're really just trying to cheat and get a free game."

The grandmother spoke up. "Sir, we _all_ saw that the ball was stuck. Perhaps you didn't hear my granddaughter sobbing her eyes out because of it? So I might suggest that instead of trying to evict us all from the premises, you start apologizing to my granddaughter and this man who tried to help her. Because of your faulty mechanism, her ball was stuck and this man simply tried to help her, thereby almost injuring himself in the process."

The employee looked a bit shocked that a patron had dared to stand up to him. But before he could say anything, Rick chimed in with one other tidbit. "And that whole free game thing? That's a crock. Those pegs are positioned so nobody will _ever_ win a free game. The nails are too close to let the ball fall through into the free game spot."

The employee looked...busted. And he looked like he was ready to make a hasty retreat. "Fine. Play the last hole." And he turned and quickly scurried back to the main building, obviously not wanting to get into a discussion-a public discussion-about the real chances of winning a free game.

Rick called after him, "And the little girl _will _be keeping that yellow ball!" And then, remembering that he still held it, he bent down and presented it to little Ava. "Here you go, sweetie. Just don't hit it in _there_ again." Then he held his hand up for a high five. "All better now?" The little girl high fived him with a big smile on her face.

The grandmother came over to shake Rick's hand. "Thank you, sir. And you're very good with her. You got her to stop crying right away."

"I've been through that. My own daughter always hated to not be able to get the ball back after the last hole, so I could sympathize."

Just then, they heard Dave say, "Hey, watch out, everyone, I'm going to work off some agression on this hole." And after they moved out of the way, he took a shot and they all watched the ball go up the ramp and bounce around in the plexiglass cave. And then, to their astonishment, Dave's ball also became stuck, although not in the exact place as Ava's had.

"Oh. My. Gosh." Rick couldn't help but say it, although his brain automatically changed the last word to a more acceptable version when he was in the presence of a young child.

Dave scurried off toward the main building, saying "Mr. Cranky has to see this!" He came back a few minutes later with the same employee, gesturing wildly toward the plexiglass maze where his ball was indeed, stuck.

"Yup, it's stuck," he stated in a bored tone.

"Uh, didn't you say like five minutes ago that 'the balls don't get stuck' and that we're all cheaters? Yet you just agreed that the ball is, indeed, stuck."

Ava chimed in loudly, "It's 'tuck. But that one's geen." She was very serious and Kate had to stifle a smile at the little girl joining in on standing up to the annoyed employee.

"Fine. It's stuck. So what do you want me to do about it?"

Dave scratched his head like he was thinking. "Well, since you just basically insulted all of us, and really pretty much defamed all of us by calling us liars-not a good way to treat paying customers, dude-and since we're obviously not able to finish playing the 18 holes that we paid for, and since Rick, here, proved that there is no way in he...heck," he amended as he glanced down at Ava and her brother, "that anyone can win a free game, I think that we all should be able to drown our sorrows at your snack bar. Gratis." He leaned a little closer to the kid. "By the way, that means free...on the house."

"Hey, I can't do that! The owner would kill me for giving that much stuff away!"

Dave looked at Rick and shrugged. He started addressing Rick, but the words were obviously for the kid's benefit. "That's too bad. I was thinking that show of goodwill would look good when I make my report to the Better Business Bureau about this place."

Rick got right on board. "Yeah, the BBB likes it when businesses try to make amends when customers have so obviously been wronged."

"And the Florida Department of Commerce...didn't I hear that they're cracking down on shady business practices in the tourism industry?" Dave looked very convincing.

"They want to hear from people with specific examples of instances like this."

And then Ava's grandmother chimed in, "And those tour books where they list the best family-friendly activities...well, I don't think that making a small child cry and then calling her a liar would fit my definition of family friendly. With not even any apology or attempt to make things right! Disgraceful!" she finished, shaking her head.

They watched as the employee's main concern became not how much food they were going to order from the snack bar, for free, but how he was going to explain all of these reports and complaints to his boss. And Rick, Dave and the grandmother...they were all good. So good, in fact, that fifteen minutes later, they all sat around the tables in the snack area with a plethora of snack food adorning the table in front of them: ice cream, nachos, chips, and of course, slushies for everyone. Soon, though, despite having a grand time being bounced on Rick's knee while he sang "Sally the Camel", Ava's eyes began to droop and her grandparents bid their thanks and goodbyes and left with the children to get them home to bed.

Now that it was just the four of them, they sat back and chuckled. "This is not really what I envisioned when I asked you two go go mini-golfing," Joelle told them.

"Rick has a way of making things interesting, doesn't he?" Kate quipped.

"Wasn't she adorable?" Rick said with a smile, thinking of Ava.

Joelle nudged Kate. "I think he's smitten. You have competition."

"I can see why. She _was_ adorable." But she also knew they needed to get some plans laid down tonight. "So, co-conspirators, we need to talk. We need to plan for Monday night and how we're going to reveal everything to everyone."

"So I get to play doting boyfriend for a little while before you tell everyone the truth, right?" Dave asked. "I really want to test out my acting abilities."

"No kissing!" Rick decreed.

"No, my wife will be there, remember? That would be...not good. But I can practice the besotted looks between now and then."

Kate nodded. "Okay, this is what I'm thinking." And she began to outline her idea for the reveal at the Old Haunt on Monday night, as the rest of the group slurped slushies and muched on the remainder of the chips. This was all starting to come together quite nicely.

* * *

_**This was a little different than other chapters, but I hope you liked it anyway. **_

_**One of my kids, when he was little, loved anything 'lellow'. I was surprised that he could say the 'L' sound so well at such a young age. And I figured 'lellow' would be a good combination with little Ava's coloring. :-)**_

_**Now, something totally unrelated to this specific chapter: I'm kind of surprised by the people who have reviewed and want Kate to be preggers when they return home. Is this theory being discussed on some fanfic board or blog somewhere? It's something I've thought of, I'll admit it. But I thought it would be too cliche. Too predictable. Too...been-there-done-that, since there are other fics out there where she gets pregnant unexpectedly. But...if you really want to read something like that in a sequel, let me know and I'll consider it, as long as I think I can do it justice and it won't be boring.**_

_**Hope you enjoyed it. Thoughts? Don't be shy! There are 366 people that get story alerts for this...I wanna hear from you!**_


	52. Chapter 52

_**First, I have to say how absolutely overwhelmed I am by the incredible response I received for the last chapter. It garnered the most reviews of any single chapter for anything I've ever written! I'm so amazed! Thank you! When I saw your response to that chapter, I wanted to update as soon as I could as a big ol' thank you, but I was already partially done with a chapter of 'Blizzard' so I had to finish that first. Then yesterday was my birthday, so while I wrote a bit, I just couldn't seem to get the entire chapter done.**_

_**Another note: when I asked for opinions at the end of the last chapter about the pregnancy possibility, I should have clarified something. IF people wanted it, I still would have never had the preggers thing happen in THIS story. It would strictly be for a sequel. This story is strictly for the original plan and the sub-plan; any ramifications would be in a different story. I don't want to say any more lest I ruin the end of this story. But if that changes anyone's opinion, just let me know.**_

_**A few notes about some of the reviews: **_

_**xLisaa, my ego is going to blow up with comments like yours, but I love 'em! Thanks! **_

_**DaveInACave, obscenely cute? Wow! Thanks! Honestly, I just thought helping a little kid would give Rick a chance to get stuck and nobody could really get mad at him for that, right? I so love my mishaps (or their mishaps)!**_

_**Anne, I don't know exactly how many more chapters, but several. And yes, there will probably be a sequel. I don't think I could put this AU to rest yet, after living with it for so long now.**_

_**kbecks, hope this is soon enough! I appreciate your restraint and I'll try not to make you wait so long next time. ;-)**_

_**Dee Hensley, No, luckily I've never had anyone almost bean me with a ball. But I could so imagine him getting obnoxious to the point where it wasn't cute or fun anymore, and I could somehow just see the whole thing in my head. Glad it 'worked'.**_

_**gmay, your confidence in me is inspiring!**_

_**Laur, thanks for the review! And your English is wonderful! I'm glad you're enjoying it so much!**_

_**MHoles, I'm sorry to have interrupted your sleep so much, but I'm kind of giddy that my little ol' story was so addicting that it made you do that! And that it was outside of your normal realm of reading and that you still found it so interesting...that's great! Thanks for letting me know!**_

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Once again, as per their new normal habit, Rick and Kate woke up that last Saturday morning wrapped up in each other's arms. Kate woke first, slowly coming to consciousness as she registered the warm breath blowing on her shoulder at even intervals. She smiled, thinking yet again of how she'd honestly never thought she'd end up like this when she came down here with him. Never in a million years, or when hell froze over and had baby angels ice skating on it. But probably everyone else thought of it, hoped for it, and even made bets about it. But she never had, for some reason. But she knew she was very deeply in denial about her true feelings at that point. Somehow, though, she gave him a chance, most likely from the grand gesture that she couldn't back out of very easily, unless she wanted to parachute out of the stupid plane, and of course the notes from her friends and coworkers. She basically had succumbed to peer pressure. It made her feel very...adolescent. But, oh, what they'd done last night after they'd gotten home..._that_ wasn't adolescent at all. At least she hoped there were no adolescents out there doing what they had done. Whoa.

She slipped out of bed to quickly use the bathroom and get a drink of water. When she came back, Rick was blinking his eyes open. She slid back into bed next to him, wrapping an arm back around his chest and snuggling up to him. He gave her a quick kiss and put his arm around her as she leaned her chin on his chest and looked up at him.

"Sorry, I tried to be quiet. I didn't mean to wake you."

He smiled. "You were quiet. Something just made me wake up and then I realized that you weren't there."

"Can't sleep without me, huh?" she joked.

"I'm sure it's something like that. I _have_ gotten rather used to you being here with me lately."

"Well, I'm back now, so do you want to go back to sleep?"

"Nah. Let's just lay here for a while. What do you want to do today? It's our last day here."

She rolled over on her back and leaned against him with her head on his shoulder, wrapping his arm around her. "Hard to believe, isn't it?" She tried to inject a normal tone to her voice, but she felt a little sad whenever she thought about it. She was-they were-in a relationship now. A seemingly serious relationship, if the ring in her suitcase was any indication. But they were in their own little bubble here. How would things change when they got back?

But she tried not to think about that now, so she tried to answer his first question. "Well, I can tell you that I do _not_ want to go mini-golfing again."

"I wonder how long they've been running that scam about the free game?"

"Probably a long time. You probably don't get too many regulars in a tourist area that would actually be going there enough to figure out that nobody _ever_ wins the free game."

"Well, at least the whole outing wasn't worthless." Kate could hear the smile in his voice and she knew he was thinking about Ava.

"Yes, by the end of the night, you certainly had made a new friend."

Rick sighed. "Wasn't she just the cutest little thing? Boy, when Alexis was that age...those were the days. Wonderful memories." Kate could hear the wistfulness in his voice. It made her wonder...she figured she knew the answer, but the question really needed to be asked.

"Rick?"

"Huh?"

"We never really talked about it...I mean, in relation to _us_, because there never really was an _us_ until recently...and I'm just wondering, like for the future, you know..." She paused; this conversation was kind of uncomfortable for her to have. It was definitely out of her realm of experience; she'd never been so serious with anyone to even talk definitely about even marriage, let alone this. She closed her eyes and blurted out, "What about kids?"

He didn't say anything for several seconds, and when he did finally respond, the response was definitely not what she expected to hear. "Well, unless you mean baby goats, the slang term is generally used to refer to short, young humans."

She rolled her eyes and reached back to lightly smack him on the side of his head. "Rick! I'm trying to be serious here."

"I know. And all of a sudden, you're being _too_ serious and I can tell that you're starting to stress out." He tightened his arm around her and gave the side of her head a little kiss. "So my question is...are you stressing out because you _would_ like to have kids or because you would _not_ like to have kids? Humans, that is, not goats. I don't think you can keep goats legally in the city."

Leave it to him to not only see that she was uncomfortable, but to also basically figure out the reason _and_ make a joke to try to provide some levity. "I'm not stressed," she refuted. "I'm simply...a bit uncomfortable because we've come a long way in a very short amount of time and this is just something we haven't discussed because it was never an issue before-it's never been an issue for me before with _anyone_-and I just never-"

"Kate." His voice was calm when he interrupted her, but it made her stop the flow of fast-moving words that were coming out of her mouth.

"What?"

"You only use that tone of voice and have diarrhea of the mouth like that when you're stressed or embarrassed about something. So don't worry about it. Just say it. When we do eventually get married, do you want to be a mom? More than just step-mom to Alexis?"

She sat up quickly and whipped her head around to look at him, and she found a lazy grin perched on his face. "_When_ we get married? Pretty sure of things, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. It'll happen, eventually. And you, my dear, are becoming quite adept at evading the question, which is actually pretty funny considering you're the one who brought it up in the first place. So will you just answer the question before I have to resort to more devious measures."

"Like what?"

"Kate, really. But fine. Since you won't go there, I'll tell you what I think." He went with his hunch about her views on the subject, and he reached up to stroke her cheek with his fingertips. "I think you'd make a great mother. You probably don't think so, but I know you would. You have a great empathy for people, and you're learning how to let go and have fun...the last few weeks prove that. I know family is important to you. You would love that child so much. I know you're scared that you'll mess something up, but you won't. You will be great."

She was silent for a few minutes. When she spoke, her voice was small, soft. "But how could you be sure?"

"Because I know you. You don't do things halfway. If you want to do something, you give it your all. If you want to be a mom, I know you'd be great because you would do everything in your power to make sure you did it right. You simply wouldn't let yourself fail."

"I wouldn't want to. But that's such a stupid thing to say too. Because who ever sets out to do something with the intention of failing?" She sighed. "It's just that the whole concept is so...huge. It's another _life_."

"But is it what you want? Do you ever want to have a child?" As he asked the question, he thought how they'd come full circle. And now he felt like he was getting a litle nervous as she avoided giving him a direct answer. She was the one who had asked the initial question, but then she started evading giving an answer about what she wanted. He had started off joking about goats, but now he was deadly serious and had seemingly taken over being the driving force behind the conversation.

She just looked at him with big eyes as she bit on her lip. But she still didn't answer the question. Instead, she asked him in a small voice, "What about you? You have one child, and she's wonderful, but she's just about grown. Now is your time to...oh, I don't know, see the world or something. Would you _really_ want to start all over again?"

Watching her look at him, watching her formulate the words that she spoke, hearing her tone as she spoke them...he knew. He knew what was wrong. She was afraid of what he'd say. She was afraid to say yes for herself, but she was also afraid he'd say no, that he'd been there, done that, didn't want to do it again. And he knew now that she didn't want him to say that, even though it was obvious to him that she fully thought he would. So she was avoiding giving her own answer, so she could just bottle it up and tuck it away if he'd said no.

He sat forward in the bed and put his arms around her, giving her a comforting embrace. Then he pulled away a little bit and tilted her head up so he could look her right in the face. "Kate, I can't think of anything that would be better than having a child with you someday."

She blinked once, then twice. "I mean, I know you liked Ava last night. That was obvious. But I thought she was like some sort of...I don't know...nostalgic moment for you. You were remembering the good times you had with your daughter. But you mean to tell me that you'd seriously want to go through all of that again? The screaming baby, no sleep, spitting up, a tantruming toddler, a smart-mouthed teenager? "

"Don't forget the smiles, the hugs, the cuddles, the fun, watching them grow and learn and become their own little people. The tooth fairy and Santa Claus. And we'd do it together, which is something that I never had the first time. I had to do most of it all alone, and that was tough at times. So yeah, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. But only with you."

"I..." she didn't really know what to say.

"Look, we agreed a long time ago that my daughter is awesome. So therefore, we already know that I already make awesome children." He waited for her to roll her eyes, and she didn't disappoint him. "_You_ are amazing. Therefore, it just stands to reason that any child we would have together would just be chock full of amazing awesomeness. The child will probably be running around with an aura of awesomeness. Everyone would stop and stare." He shrugged and grinned at her. "How can you pass _that_ up?"

She didn't say anything, just looked at him quizzically, even though she was smiling a bit at his over-the-top description. He decided to confront it again, really head on. "So you'd like to have a baby, someday, presumably with me, but you're worried that you wouldn't be good at it, and you're also worried because despite all that, you'd still like to, but also, you think I may not want to go through raising a child again just because Alexis is almost grown, so you don't really want to say anything about what you want. How warm am I?"

She looked at him and her mouth fell open a bit as he talked. After he finished, the words "How do you do that?" escaped her mouth before she could stop them. Upon realizing what she'd just said, she looked down at the rumpled bedsheets and then back up at his face, which was now wearing a small grin. "Pretty damn warm."

"So are we good?" She nodded, hesitantly. "I think we both want the same thing. So we can maybe table this discussion until after there's some hardware adorning a certain finger on your left hand?"

"Sounds like a plan." She gave him, finally, a little smile, relaxed again, and not even realizing that he had again made that assumption about her accepting the ring. "But Rick?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't want goats."

He grinned at her and pulled her back down on the bed to lay against the pillows. "Thank goodness! Did I ever tell you about that goat that tried to eat my jacket when I..."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

A couple of hours later, he looked over the shirts in the souvenir shop. Kate had told him, "I see them more often in work clothes, so don't ask me what kind of t-shirt to buy for those guys. What do they wear when they play Madden with you?"

"I think Esposito wears stuff that's left over from his high school days, if you ask me. Old and ratty. Hey, how about this one?" He held up a shirt with a design that covered the whole shirt, showing a surfer collage.

"That's nice. It's different." Kate was looking through a differnt rack and found a fishing shirt for the Captain. "Weren't you and Montgomery talking about fishing once?" He nodded. "What do you think of this one? Think he'd like this?"

"Sure." They kept browsing through shirts until they had their arms full. They took all of the shirts to the register, and then Rick had a thought. "Kate?" he asked her.

"We have stuff for Lanie and the guys, but I'd like to get something for Alexis and my mother. Can you help me?" He gave her the puppy dog eyes, which caused her to roll hers.

"Really, Rick, you don't have to resort to that look. Yes, I'll help, but honestly, I'm not really sure that this shop is exactly your mother's taste."

He looked around. "You may be right. Well, keep your eyes open. You never know what you may find."

In the end, she found several things for Alexis, including a couple of very tiny-looking tank tops that made Rick start shaking his head from side to side. "No. No way. Those don't even look like they'll fit her. Those don't even look like they'd fit a six year old."

"Chill, Daddy. This is what girls like to wear. And they do the layered look, so she'd probably wear them underneath something anyway. You asked me to pick some things out, so I did that. Of course, if you'd like to get her frumpy old lady clothes-"

"That's exactly what I'd like to-" he interrupted.

"-that she would be thoroughly embarrassed to wear," she continued, "then you just go hang these back and I'll be sure to tell her about the cool stuff that I picked out for her but her uncool dad wouldn't let me buy."

"I am _not_ an uncool dad," he protested. "We have our own laser tag gear."

"You dress your daughter up in _that_," she said, pointing to the sweatshirt that he was holding, that had gaudy flowers and was more suited to a seventy year old than a seventeen year old, "and you might as well put your picture up on a billboard with the caption 'New York's Most Uncool Dad'."

He gave her a pouty look but hung the sweatshirt back on the rack. She looked around the store. Spotting a zip-front hoodie that was more stylish and would look good with Alexis' coloring, she took it off the rack and gave it to Rick. "Here. If you have to get her a sweatshirt, this one will work a lot better."

"It's ripped," he told her, pointing to the cuffs.

"It's supposed to be ripped. Rick, have you ever been a teenage girl?"

"No. I don't think so, anyway. Not unless some aliens-"

"I'll take that as a no. But I have. So will you just trust me on this and buy the stuff already?"

"You wore ripped clothing?"

"Yes!" she all but shouted at him in exasperation. "And loved it. And it's 'distressed', not ripped." She put her hand on her hip and glared at him. "Now, for the last time, are you going to get these things for her, or will I be using _my_ charge card today? Because I'm fine with that. You can get her the senior citizen sweatshirt, and I'll get her this, and we'll just make a little wager on what you see her wear first."

He knew that challenging tone in her voice, he knew that look on her face, and he knew he would never win that bet. Because as he looked at the clothing she'd picked out, he realized he could see his daughter wearing the items in his mind. Grumbling something unintelligible, he stalked over to the counter and the cashier began ringing up his purchases. She yelled out that she'd be walking around outside while he finished.

A couple of stores down, she found a little eclectic boutique and she wandered in. Along one wall, they had jewelry, and as she looked at the pieces, she saw Martha. She turned around and walked quickly out of the store, and found Rick just coming out of the first store with his purchases. Ignoring the somewhat pouty look still on his face, she grabbed his arm and dragged him into the boutique. She pointed to the wall and told him, "Your mother. Anything there should work."

"What do you like?" he asked her, a little bit overwhelmed by the variety and by some of the wild pieces.

"Are you actually going to listen to me without pouting or grumbling?"

He looked sideways at her and glared at her, but begrudgingly said "Yeeeesss."

She contemplated for a few seconds, and then reached out and took an aqua and green necklace and bracelet set off the wall. "This," she told him. "And we can always tell her it looked like the ocean and we wanted to bring her a piece of our trip. That should satisfy her dramatic flair, right?"

His jaw dropped a bit before he recovered and smiled at her. "You are getting really good! Her dramatic flair..." he said as he walked off to pay for the jewelry.

She waited for him outside, and they walked to the car when he came out. After they were settled, she looked at him when he didn't start the car right away. "I prefer to sun myself on the beach rather than in a car, Castle, so can we get moving now?"

"You will make a great mother," he told her, with a sappy grin on his face.

"What? Where in the world did that come from?" They were just picking out souvenirs and now he's back to the parenthood topic, the one that they'd agreed to table for now?

"You helping me with clothes for Alexis. You defended her. Saved her from being embarrassed by me getting her something tacky."

"I'm a girl. It wasn't hard."

"But that's what a good mother does. She sticks up for her child. God, you're going to be great. And you'll be a great step-mother to Alexis too."

"Rick, does the phrase 'you're getting ahead of yourself' mean anything to you? Do I have to remind you that there have been no acceptances of any questions involving round, sparkly jewelry? Therefore, there should be no conversations or even comments like those that seem to be spewing forth from your mouth. Capisce?"

"Oh. Sorry. After you left, it just hit me, how you acted, how you defended her fashion so she wouldn't be cast into the pits of eternal frumpiness. But you're right...I won't say any more about it. Yet," he finished, which earned him a mini-glare from her. But then he turned around and began rummaging in one of the bags in the back seat. He pulled out a smaller bag and gave it to her. "Here," he said.

"What's this?"

"Just open it. You'll understand when you see it. Or them."

She opened the bag and found a handful of refrigerator magnets, emblazoned with the word 'Captiva'. Smiling, she made the connection to what she had told him, when he started giving her all of the presents a couple of nights ago, about her family always getting magnets on all of their family vacations when she was growing up. "You remembered what I told you that night..." she trailed off as she looked through them again. "That was really sweet. Thank you."

He smiled, pleased that he had made her happy. Then he shrugged as he put on his seatbelt. "It's a family tradition."

His words caught her off-guard as she put on her own seatbelt. Family tradition. But whose family? With all of the talk this morning about kids and the round sparkly piece of jewelry that should not be mentioned and the question that was sitting out there, she was left feeling that he was thinking of a totally different 'family' in relation to the 'family tradition' that he'd just mentioned. And while it did catch her off-guard, she suddenly realized that the concept...a new family...didn't feel as foreign or odd as she thought it might.

_**

* * *

**_

I know I went a bit overboard in my a/n at the beginning of this chapter, so I'll try to keep this shorter.

_**First, hope you liked it. Thanks to 'I'm Widget' for the idea about the procreation talk. Hope I did OK with it. I tried to inject a little bit of the classic Beckett/Castle miscommunication into the conversation with them (or one of them) thinking the other thinks one thing, but they don't really want to admit their own feelings, and they end up being totally wrong.**_

_**Second, let me know what you think...review? Please?**_

_**Third, I have a bit more time this week so I will really try to get another chapter out relatively soon. **_


	53. Chapter 53

_**For those of you who don't have anything to do this weekend, here's another chapter. I want to say 'Welcome' to Overpressure, who has been slowly catching up with all of the chapters and has reviewed a good many of them. It's so fun to watch the reviews and seeing how the story is still unfolding for someone else, like the angsty ending of chapter 22 but the Casketty goodness of chapter 23. **_

_**The usual disclaimers apply.**_

_**Enjoy! (I hope.)**_

They spent the remainder of their last morning and afternoon in Florida back at the house. They took their purchases up to the bedroom, and Kate, somewhat wistfully, put her suitcase on the loveseat in the room's sitting area and opened it up, preparing to start her packing. When she went into the closet, she stopped dead and turned around to Rick. "Oh, my God!" she exclaimed.

He looked up in alarm. "What's wrong?"

"After you got me drunk with your hangman game on the plane down here, I seem to have acquired a lot of new clothing."

He crinkled his eyebrows together in confusion. "Newsflash, Kate. You've been wearing those clothes for two weeks. You just now figured this out?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, Castle, I didn't just figure this out, but this _is_ the first time I've thought about how I'm going to get it all home. There is no way I'm going to have room for all of this in my suitcase."

"Oh." She had a point. "Yeah."

She made a 'come on' gesture with both of her hands and told him "So that's it? Where's one of your brilliant ideas?"

"Hey, I've had plenty of brilliant ideas over the last couple of weeks! I got you here, didn't I?"

She put her hands on her hips. "So you're telling me that you used up all of your magic ninja powers of idea generation by getting me down here?"

"No!" he protested. "But...none of them happen to involve...a mechanism to haul a new wardrobe."

"Well, what should I do? I can't very well carry everything on hangers."

"You could wear some of it. Like the red bikini..." he finished, as he waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Oh, sure. That'll be soooo appropriate for a New York winter. And you'd never survive seeing me in it for that long anyway."

He stared off into space for a moment with a dreamy look on his face. "But it would really be fun trying."

She walked over and swatted him on the arm, and he jumped a bit as his gaze abruptly found hers again as he was jolted out of his daydream, which was no doubt R-rated or worse. "Focus, Rick."

"Fine. Spoil my fantasy,"

She leaned over into his personal space and trailed a finger down his neck and onto his chest, trailing off where the first button was fastened. "Oh, Rick," she purred in a softly seductive voice, "If you find a way to carry all of these clothes home, there are just so many fantasies I could bring to life for you."

He gulped. Then he reached out to grab the back of the love seat. "Okay, you're right. I wouldn't survive it. But damn, what a way to go."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They managed to get some of their clothing packed before Rick declared that he was hungry and wanted some lunch. They rummaged around for some leftovers in the refrigerator, and decided to take them out to eat them on the back deck overlooking the beach. It was a beautiful day; sunny with fluffy clouds in the sky, a gentle breeze, and not too hot. She was going to be sorry to not be able to experience this anymore.

As if he'd read her mind, she heard him behind her calling her name. She turned around to find him with her camera in his hands, ready to take a picture of her. "Smile!" he instructed and then snapped a couple of pictures.

After he snapped the picture, she got up and pointed him toward his chair, taking his place as she took the camera from him. She got the shot lined up and told him to smile, but then her jaw dropped as behind him, she saw several of the native birds swoop down. She couldn't even get a word out to warn Rick before they were coasting around and swooping here and there, trying to see what food they could scavenge from the humans' lunch. One of the birds narrowly missed Rick's head as it came in for a landing on the edge of the table, and feeling the bird by him, he jumped up and started frantically waving his arms around. Kate, through some presence of mind that she didn't know she had, kept her finger on the shutter button and the camera kept firing off shot after shot of the aviary anomaly. Rick was now yelling at the birds and was running around the table, arms flailing, trying to shoo them away. Luckily, they didn't actually land on any of the food, but that was probably only due to Rick's insane little dance. Finally, after what seemed like ten minutes but was really only about ten or fifteen seconds, the birds flew away, and he turned and looked at her with a shell-shocked look on his face. She still was snapping pictures, even at that point, and she knew she got one after he turned around with the bird-befuddled look on his face. Finally, when the birds were all gone and Rick was still standing there in the same spot, she put down the camera and walked over to him.

"Do you just attract odd wildlife wherever you go? I mean, first the alligator, then a hoarde of hungry, wild birds?"

"Wouldn't it be a flock?" he answered automatically, but still looking pretty shocked.

"Sure, a flock." She reached up to smooth his hair that had evidently gotten messed up when he was running around and doing his bird-shooing. "I got pictures," she told him with a little smile, hoping to snap him out of his stupor.

"I'll look at them some other time. I don't think I want to experience that again anytime soon, even digitally." Then his eyes found hers. "Did that really just happen? Did a flock of birds just swoop down and try to eat our lunch, and me with it?"

She laughed. "Yes to the birds and the swooping, but I highly doubt they were trying to eat _you_. I think they're probably vegetarians."

She pushed him back down in his vacated chair as she put the camera in 'play' mode and scrolled through the pictures. She started laughing as she looked at them, and on one particular one, she zoomed in on his face and collapsed in her chair in laughter. Rick looked at her mirth and told her dryly, "I think I'm beginning to regret getting that camera for you."

"Are you kidding?" she asked when she could talk again. "I know I was skeptical at first, but after this, I have done a flippin' 180 on the subject of cameras. Look at your _face_ in this one!" she told him, shoving the display side of the camera toward him. "And I love how clear it is!"

He looked at the picture hesitantly. "Ugh." He covered his eyes with his fingers, and then he put his hand down and looked at Kate. "I know I said that you-we-should start preserving some memories, but are you really sure that you want to preserve _that_ particular memory?"

She looked at him, and the smile bloomed a little wider on her face. "Uh huh. Absolutely."

"And I suppose you're going to share these nice 'memories' with Lanie?"

"Of course. Well, not right away, because we have to maintain the ruse for a bit. But I'm sure that I'll have to work to get back into her good graces after we come clean, so I'm sure that showing her this little sequence of shots will do at least a little bit to soften her up."

"Glad to be of service. I think."

"Just think of it as taking one for the team."

"I might need to be consoled afterwards. A lot."

"I think by then, we can probably arrange something."

They shared loaded smiles as they looked down at the food. He gazed at it somewhat skeptically and said, "Are you sure none of the birds landed on this? I mean, I didn't see any, but I was running around and-"

"-screaming like a banshee with your arms flailing around?"

He glared at her and amended haughtily, "I was going to say 'trying to get the birds to leave us alone.'"

"But my version is soooo much more descriptive," she told him, smiling somewhat smugly. "You'd think for a writer, you'd give the more descriptive account."

"I think perhaps the correct word might not be 'descriptive', but 'embellished'."

"Rick, Rick, Rick." She shook her head in mock censure. "Don't forget I have the photographic proof. Anyway," she continued, looking back at the food, "I think it's fine. I think I only saw one or two of the birds land on the actual table, not the food, and the rest were just concerned with flying around and freaking you out."

He narrowed his eyes and gave her a sarcastic 'funny, ha ha' look before he said, "Okay, then. Let's dig in."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After they ate, they changed into their swimsuits and took a frisbee down to the beach. They tossed it around for a little while and then Rick tossed it over by a chair before grabbing Kate's hand. "Come on," he said, "let's go for a walk."

He laced his fingers with hers as they walked, careful to avoid the large shell deposits because both were barefoot. They didn't talk for a while, just walked, sometimes in the waves and sometimes at the edge. The beach was pretty quiet, with it being a Saturday, and Kate remembered how he'd said that the Saturdays here were the less-populated days for the beach because it was a check-in/check-out day for the majority of the condo complexes on the island. They saw a few people here and there, but not many. By now, their eyes were unconsciously trained to look for shells as they walked. They alternately spotted some in the waves and would bend down to pick them up to see if they were worth saving, but their joined hands never parted.

Kated spotted a shell a little bit ahead of where they were walking, and jogged forward before it was swallowed by a wave, pulling Rick with her. She bent down to pick it up, and wasn't startled at all when she found an animal inside the perfect shell. After tossing it back into a little deeper water, she said, "Hey, wasn't it two weeks ago today that I found Marvin?"

He thought for a moment. "I believe you're right. That was our first full day here." Then a smile formed on his face as he remembered more. "And if I remember right, you were so scared of little old Marvin that you just jumped into my waiting arms, instinctively trusting that my rugged masculinity would protect you from the fierce and ugly sea creature." The smile grew larger as he waited for the eyeroll. He didn't get an eyeroll as expected, but he did get a raised-eyebrow glare.

"Rugged masculinity? Well, if I remember correctly, that rugged masculinity wasn't really good for anything. You pushed me away so quickly that I'm surprised I didn't hear a sonic boom."

He pulled her toward him with his other arm. "You _know_ why I pushed you away."

"Not then I didn't. That was the first time we'd been that...close, especially wearing as little as we were. I felt some weird things; well, weird in relation to you."

"I was still reeling from seeing you in a swimsuit for the first time. Then you fell against me..." He tilted his face up to the sun and closed his eyes as if remembering, a contented, peaceful smile adorning his mouth.

She thumped him on the forehead with her finger. "You didn't look like that then. You looked anything _but_ the picture of contentment and happiness. You didn't even smile. You didn't joke around. I thought that _you_ thought I was some revolting bimbette who was trying to get an opportunity to hang on you and you were trying to extricate yourself from my clutches as quickly as possible."

"I know what you thought. And I'm sorry. More miscommunication. Or really, just lack of communication."

"Even if we did communicate, I'm not sure that we would have known what to say at that point anyway."

"There's probably some truth in that." He leaned down to kiss her lips. "But there's no miscommunication between us now, is there? You know exactly where I stand." The unspoken look between them spoke volumes, though silently, of the question from two nights ago and the piece of jewelry tucked away in their bedroom. But he didn't want to dwell on that, because he told her he wouldn't, so he just smiled down at her. "And you _know_ that I find you anything but revolting."

"Yes, and yes. I've had many demonstrations in the last week of exactly how unrevolting you find me." She gave him a quick kiss and then turned around to start walking again, pulling him with her. "Let's keep walking."

They resumed their walk, sometimes stopping to inspect shells, sometimes kicking water at each other, and occasionally stopping to steal a kiss. One time, when Kate had stopped to look for a shell in about a foot of water, Rick gave her a casual little hip bump that almost made her lose her balance. But she recovered quickly enough to run after him, and intending to tackle him, she jumped on his back as he ran. But to her surprise, he didn't fall over, but somehow caught her under the backs of her legs and hoisted her into a piggy-back ride and took off with her. She was laughing and telling him to put her down, and he was running and laughing and making 'vroom vroom' noises as he raced around the wet sand by the water's edge. Finally, partially because he wasn't really in shape for piggy-back beach running and partially because he was laughing so hard, he ran down into the water and collapsed, sending them both splashing into the surf.

Through tired breathlessness brought about from running and laughing, he said "We...need to just...walk normally...for a while."

"Don't have the stamina, Castle?" she teased, although she did sound slightly winded herself.

"Hey, when you..." he pointed at her tiredly, "can give a...high-speed piggy-back ride to me, on sand, no less, without getting...winded, then...you can talk."

They got up and went a little further down the beach, where they encountered a man fishing with a boy who looked to be about nine or ten years old. The man was just casting out into the surf. Rick thought it was a futile exercise, after all, he'd never seen any fish worth catching any of the many times he'd been swimming in the ocean. So he nodded at the man as he and Kate greeted him politely as they passed him. But then, they weren't very far past him when the man called to the boy, telling him to get the net, that he had a fish. Rick turned around, curious to see what the man hauled in. He was really pulling as he reeled in the fish. He looked up and when he saw Rick, he said off-handedly, "This guy's really putting up a fight."

So they stayed to watch, with the man hauling the fish in far enough to where the boy could get the net under it. The man brought it up out of the surf and took it out of the net. "Wow...that's a beauty!" Rick and Kate went over to look at the fish, and the man appeared to be eager to show it off. He was telling the boy, "It's a spanish mackerel, and a nice sized one."

Kate bent over the fish, and couldn't stop herself from saying "Are those _teeth_?"

"Yes, ma'am," the man answered. They were all looking at the bright whitish fish with the orange-colored spots. But what they couldn't get over were the teeth.

"I don't think I'd want to be swimming with him when he's hungry," Rick told them.

They oohed and ahed over the fish-and its impressive teeth-for a while longer, and chatted with the man a bit. Then he unhooked the mackerel and threw it back in the ocean, and rebaited his hook for another try. They were still chatting and watching the waves roll in when the man felt another tug on his line. Rick couldn't believe that he had another fish so soon, but he did. This time, the fish was different...the man said it was a snook. They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Rick and Kate decided to turn around and walk back to their house.

They'd never walked so far down the beach before, and while it was fun to see a new section of the beach, they did need to start heading back. Rick had some more quiet togetherness planned for their last day, and while the fish were definitely interesting, he wasn't going to use another minute of his remaining time with Kate to look at scaly aquatic creatures. She was much better to look at. As they started their walk, he unconsciously took her hand again, which she willingly let him do as she turned her head sideways and kissed his shoulder as they walked. She smiled that brilliant smile up at him, and he grinned down at her, thinking that he must be the luckiest guy in the world to be here, with her, like this. He picked up their joined hands and gave the top of hers a kiss as they walked slowly back to the beach house.

_**That's it for now! There are still several more chapters, so for those of you who are my devoted followers, don't worry, you'll still have more reading material. And by the way, have I thanked you lately for being devoted followers? No? Well, THANK YOU!**_

_**And triple thanks if you leave a review!**_

_**Oh, and the fish? Definitely stolen from my vacation. And the teeth on the mackerel? Yes, I have photographic proof of that. Would not want to meet one of those things in the water!**_

_**By the way, I heard 'I want to know what love is' on the radio yesterday. Now I think of this story when I hear that song. Is that weird?**_

_**As always, thanks for reading!**_


	54. Chapter 54

_**After chapter 53 was posted, this story hit 400 people that are subscribed to story alerts for this story! Wow! And as I publish this chapter, the number is up to 407. I thank each and every one of you for following and especially to those of you who continue to encourage me with your wonderful comments! I know I don't respond to all of them, but I read them all, and I love to read them, and honestly, they make me want to write just a little bit more to get you updates faster. So thank you, my faithful reviewers!**_

_**Standard disclaimers apply.**_

* * *

The trip back along the beach seemed a little longer, probably just because they were just walking on this trip, not engaging in splashing contests and piggy-back rides. But it was still nice just holding hands and walking in the waves. Despite the beautiful day-the bright sunshine of the afternoon, the crash of the waves and the birds flying overhead-Kate felt herself get just a bit sad when she thought that this would be her last afternoon to experience this. Then, from out of nowhere, as she walked beside Rick in the wet sand, a little voice invaded her brain, telling her, _'No, this doesn't have to be your last afternoon of this. If you marry him, he'll give this to you whenever you want.'_

She quickly looked over at Rick just to make sure he hadn't tried some ventriloquist thing-after all, it sounded like something he would say-but his mouth was closed and he was staring at a boat out in the water. No, the voice was from inside her head. Oh, God, she was going crazy. Maybe the sun was getting to her. She didn't need some little rogue voice inside of her head telling her to marry a guy just so she could be jetted off to a beach on a whim. So she mentally tried to slap that little voice silly.

_'Oh, you idiot. You know he loves you. The vacation is just a nice bonus.'_

Crap. The mental slap didn't seem to have worked. That voice really needed to shut the hell up. She was _not_ ready to get married. She was still getting used to this relationship thing, well, particularly this relationship thing with _Rick Castle._ So far it was going well, but what about when they got back home? Things were going to change. Her whole _life_ was going to change. A lot. How would they work together now that things had changed, really changed, between them? And how would everyone else treat their relationship? What if they just crashed and burned because they couldn't handle a relationship in the real world and with all of the pressures that came along with that?

It was a whole different world back there. It wasn't all fun and games. She had a job, and he had other committments. He had a daughter. Oh, this was so complicated!

She'd never been in a relationship with anyone quite like him before. And frankly, when she met him, she never thought she'd _ever_ be in a relationship with him. She'd been determined that she was _not_ going to be the flavor of the month, week or night. She thought he was a shallow, immature, uncommitted, selfish, live-for-the-moment playboy that didn't have a serious bone in his body. Now she knew differently. Very differently. Well, he was still somewhat of a live-for-the-moment type of guy, and there were definitely quite a few bones in his body that were about as un-serious as they could be.

But over the last years of getting to know him, she'd found out that she was wrong, so very wrong, about all of those other things. So much of it was his public persona. It was odd to try try to equate the man that knew and loved now with the man that she'd thought him to be then. But even with how much she knew she loved him now, with how different she knew he was now, what if the magic faded as soon as they got back to the real world? Then a random thought occurred to her-Castle really was rubbing off on her-and she looked sideways at him.

"Why did you start shaving?"

His hand immediately went to the vacation-stubble that was coating his lower face and jawline now. "Huh? Beckett, do you need glasses? Or is the sun in your eyes?"

"No, not now. I mean a while ago. When I first met you, you had that devil-may-care attitude, and you didn't really bother to shave very much. You always had some stubble, like you wanted to look a little like a bad boy."

"You are seriously asking about my stubble, lack thereof?"

"Yes. So shut up and answer the question."

"I was a bad boy. Well, kind of. I just didn't care." He paused, and didn't say anymore, so she continued the story.

"I know. And then you started following me around. But somewhere in there, you started shaving more, and it got so that seeing you with this look," she reached up and ran her free hand over his jawline, "became really unusual." And now, she could admit, kind of hot. But back to the point. "So what changed?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "Why?"

"I was just thinking about how you were when I first met you and how you are now. Then it occurred to me that you always had that 'been-out-all-night-partying' look when you first started following me around. Part of it was the stubble. And then eventually you started shaving regularly and voila, the stubble was a thing of the past."

"Why, Detective, I didn't think that you noticed those tiny things about me, especially back then!"

"Oh, shut up, Castle. I certainly didn't lose any sleep over your stubble or lack thereof, so you can get that out of your mind right now. I just remember wondering a couple of times early on, when you had apparently annoyed me excessively well, why you couldn't at least bother to shave. I mean, we were professionals and you turn up like you're trying out for a 'Bad Boys Weekly' cover or you just rolled out of bed. We were trying to do a job and it was all like it was some big game to you that you couldn't even bother to finish grooming yourself in the morning." She rolled her eyes to punctuate how annoyed she'd been by his cavalier attitude.

He looked over at her with a strange look, and she realized how her words must have sounded to him now, so she stopped walking and pulled on his hand so he would turn toward her. "Hey, those thoughts were from right after you started shadowing me, when you did excessively annoy me on a regular basis. It's not you now, and it hasn't been you for a while. Now you only annoy me a little bit," she finished with a small smile as she wrapped her arms lightly around him.

He looked thoughtful before he spoke. "You're probably at least somewhat right, which is kind of hard to admit. It wasn't 'real' to me. I lived in such a superficial world, with everyone catering to me. It's pretty cool at first, but it does get boring after a while, unless you combine it with drugs to make it seem interesting, and I was never into that scene. But I think it took me a while to realize that there was another real world out there, with real problems and real tragedies. You're right, I wasn't serious at first. But I eventually started seeing what you did, what you all did. It wasn't just cops-and-robbers. I got a new respect for that, and I think maybe I developed a new respect for myself because I could actually be helpful to you. So I guess I just started to treat it more as a job, and maybe somewhere along the line I did start shaving more. I never really realized it at the time, but you're right...I do shave more now. Well, except for these last two weeks."

"I wondered if it had something to do with that."

"You're the detective, after all." He smiled down at her, before exclaiming "Hey! That explains it!"

"That explains what?"

"I used to have this electric razor...had it like, _forever_. It was the best thing. It was old, but I liked it, you know? But then it just died several months ago so I had to get a new one. Now I wonder if it died because I started using it more?" He grinned at her. "Oh, my gosh. The homicide team caused a death. The death of my razor."

She rolled her eyes. "Maybe it died because it was old?"

"Nah. There you go again-ruining a perfectly good theory with logic. I like my story better. And you're the detective, you can investigate it!"

"Fine. But ultimately, you just confessed to murdering it by overuse, regardless of the cause of the overuse. So I'd have to arrest you."

"With handcuffs?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You wish," she told him. Then she turned and grabbed his hand and resumed their walk back to the house. "Come on, stubble king, we have a vacation to finish."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She sat on the beach chair a while later, just watching the waves and the birds that were running around and picking at the tiny little shells that washed up with each wave. She and Rick had pulled the chairs right up to the edge of the water and then he had gone up to the house to 'get something', with instructions for her to stay where she was.

She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes against the sun, and she started to wonder what he was doing when he didn't come back after a few minutes. But she wasn't going to worry about it. His delay could mean any one of a number of things: he'd checked email or his phone messages, he tripped over a couch, or maybe he even got attacked by a hoarde of the tiny lizards that lived in the bushes down here. Who knew? The rest of her life was certainly going to be interesting with him in it, that was for sure.

Then her eyes flew open again when she realized that she'd just thought, automatically, in terms of 'the rest of her life'..._with Rick Castle in it_. That thought right there made her heart start beating a little faster. Sure, she had that gorgeous engagement ring in her room, but even Rick, himself, had said that he knew she wasn't ready yet when he gave it to her. And she _totally_ knew she wasn't ready for that committment yet. So why did her mind keep having these thoughts, like it was a done deal? They were still getting used to the relationship thing with each other. And they had to see if they could make this work in the 'real world', back in New York, that what they had down here wouldn't fade like some dream within the traffic and the crowds of the city. But wait a minute...didn't she just have this conversation with herself just a little while ago? If she didn't watch it, that rogue little voice inside of her head was going to start spewing nonsense again. Boy, she really was losing it. This wasn't good. Frustrated with the direction that her thoughts kept heading, she scrunched her eyes shut and used the heels of her hands to bang on her forehead in an attempt to knock some sense into herself.

"Beckett, why are you hitting yourself on the head?"

She jumped and screamed a little at the sound of Rick's voice as she whipped her head around toward the sound. Where had he come from? "So now you're sneaking up on me?" she accused with a little bit of a frantic tone to her voice. And then, noting the tray that held two tall glasses and a box, she asked, "What's that?"

He decided to answer the first question first. "I didn't _try_ to sneak up on you. Maybe you would have noticed me coming if you hadn't been hitting yourself on the head. And exactly why _were_ you hitting yourself on the head anyway? That couldn't have been pleasant. And trust me, it doesn't work anyway. I've tried it before when I've had writer's block and it's never helped. I just end up with a headache."

She listened to his monologue, thinking there was no way in hell she was going to tell him exactly what she was thinking about. She was sure he'd be all too happy to hear about her rogue thoughts regarding potential nuptual bliss. So instead, she just said again, "What's that?", grateful beyond belief that she could have something to think about besides her own errant thoughts or her own childish head-banging antics.

"I made strawberry margaritas. And this is some of the chocolate cake that I bought at the bakery. We can't take it all home, so we really need to eat some."

"You brought me alcohol? And chocolate?" He nodded, and she held up a hand and replied simply, "Gimme. Now."

Rick looked at her quizzically as she grabbed one of the glasses and took a big, long slurp from the straw. "Uh, Kate? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Rick. I just...needed something to drink and this looked good."

"Sure, Kate. You were thirsty. That's why you practically attacked the tray."

Slurp. Swallow. "Uh huh. Thanks."

He didn't buy it for a minute. All of a sudden, something was bothering her, enough to make her dive at a girly drink and get giddy at the mention of chocolate. Yeah, she was stressed about something. But he wasn't gone all that long...what could have happened? Well, he could find out, but a little reinforcement wouldn't hurt, he thought, as he cut a generously-sized piece of cake and held it up as if examining it. "The cake actually has a mocha buttercream frosting, I'm told, so you even get a little coffee. Well, at least the flavoring."

She tried to take the plate but he held it out of her reach. "Castle, hand over the chocolate," she said with a warning tone in her voice.

"Nuh-uh-uh," he said. "Not until you tell me what's stressing you out so much all of a sudden that you're chugging the margarita like it's a slush puppy and you're practically diving at the chocolate cake."

"Nothing." She glared at him.

"With all due respect, my love, that is load of hooey so big that it wouldn't even fit in the pool up there."

She glared at him, but he glared back. She tried the raised eyebrow trick, which he also matched. She then said "Castle..." using a tone that was more than slightly menacing.

He just continued the glare and said "Beckett..." once again matching her tone. "You want cake, you spill. We have this honesty thing going now, right? Full communication?"

She knew he was right. And it burned. So she took a long sip of the margarita before heaving a big sigh. "I'm just wondering how this whole...thing...between us is going to play out when we get back to New York."

Ah. _That_ was it. The time had come. He'd already figured out that at some point, she'd start freaking out, Beckett-style, about going home and dealing with the new facets of their relationship there. Frankly, he thought it would happen on the plane going home, when the reality of leaving would have really set in. Well, it was time to set her straight.

"Kate, first of all let me say that we do not have a 'thing'. We have a relationship. And someday, I'm confident that we're going to put another name on what we have, a word that starts with the letter 'M' and is eight letters long."

_Marriage._ There was that word again. At least he didn't say it out loud. She knew how she'd said in the hot tub the same night that he'd given her the ring that they should just call it what it was, but she was kind of glad right now that he hadn't.

"Sure, we have a...relationship...here, but this is far from the real world. We can sleep in until all hours. We go out on private yachts. We have sex on the beach..."

"No, actually, we didn't. We had sex in the ocean, but not on the beach, which I'm very happy about. That sand tends to get in places where you definitely don't want it."

She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. Things won't be the same when we get back."

"No, the location won't be the same, and regretfully, the weather won't either. But I love you down here, and I'll love you back in New York, and I'll continue to love you whenever or whereever." He paused to let his words sink in a little bit. "And if you also remember, we watched movies and TV shows down here, we cooked together down here and we even did the dishes together. Those are all things that we'll do back in New York too. They're part of real life, no matter where you are. And we can't have sex in the ocean, but we can certainly use the bathtub. And I have a nice, roomy shower too. With seats." He gave her a sexy grin as he raised an eyebrow suggestively.

"And you also have a daughter and a mother that you live with," she told him, to bring him back down to earth again.

"Who both like you quite a bit," he countered, without missing a beat. "And if you remember, one of them has already requested that you go formal dress shopping with her. Remember that?"

Oh, yeah. Alexis did ask Rick that, and that was a while ago. Relatively speaking, of course.

Rick continued. "The daughter and the mother are not the problem. Sex on the beach is not the problem. So what is the problem?"

Without thinking, she blurted out, "It's too fast."

He looked at her, really looked. "No, that may be part of it, but that's not all. We've already discussed the speed with which everything has happened. We've talked about how we got a lot of the traditional dating or getting-to-know-you stuff out of the way before this trip, before we were even officially together."

She was still silent. Finally, he reiterated what he told her earlier. "Kate, the location may change, but I will love you and you'll love me, no matter where we happen to go. Just because we admitted things in Florida doesn't mean that we didn't build most of that relationship in New York before we ever came down here. All of the groundwork happened there, when we didn't even realize it. We just needed a change of scenery to make it all click into place for us, I guess."

"What if it clicks out of place when we get back?"

"It won't. That bell has been run already. We can't unring it. And I don't want to. Do you?"

She looked at him for a few long moments. Deep down, she knew the answer that he wanted to hear, the answer that he expected to hear, which was the answer that was true. They'd be okay, now and when they got back. "No. I don't want to unring that bell." After she said it, she was visibly more calm, as if just by saying it, she knew everything would be okay.

"That's what I thought. And if we both want the same thing, then there's a pretty good chance that together, we can make sure it happens."

"If you knew what I was going to say, then why didn't you tell me to shut up and stop obsessing?"

"Would that have helped?"

Begrudgingly, she told him, "No."

"Kate?"

"Yeah?"

"Promise me something?"

She regarded him cautiously. "I don't know," she told him honestly. "I'll try. What?"

"Promise me that if you ever get freaked out, talk to me? Okay? I'm here for you. And even if I'm part of the problem, there's no way we can fix it unless you clue me in first."

She thought about it, and then she nodded. "I can do that."

"Good," he told her.

Then she continued. "Rick?" she asked.

Cautiously, he answered, "What?"

"Can I have my cake now? Before the frosting melts?"

With a smile, he handed her the slice of cake and then turned back to the box and cut one for himself.

"Thanks, Rick. And I'm sorry I freaked out."

"You're welcome, I know, and don't worry, I was expecting it."

She almost choked on her cake when she realized what he'd said. "What?" she said, trying to make sure the cake didn't fall out of her mouth.

"Kate, give me some credit. I've been shadowing you, watching you, studying you for years. I know you. And I know you a lot better after these last two weeks. Do you realize how much talking we've done? Lots. So no matter how you felt about me, no matter if you knew you loved me or whatever, I knew that at some point you'd freak out about some aspect of our new relationship. I actually thought it would be on the plane going home tomorrow, but I can admit I was a little off in that."

"So you've been biding your time, waiting for me to freak out?" she prompted.

"Basically, yes."

"That sounds so pathetic. Not you. It makes me sound pathetic...that you knew I would have some...issues...and you were right. Ugh."

"It stands to reason. Kate, remember, I've been married twice already. I'm not terribly proud of two failed marriages, but at least they taught me a couple of things: what's wrong with a relationship and what I don't want, and then, what's right and what I really _do_ want in a relationship. But you don't have that particular wealth of experience. So it only stood to reason that you would freak out a little bit. Anyone in the same situation would. And it's not pathetic. Because then I'd have to be a little bit pathetic for loving you. And I am _not_ pathetic."

She smiled and him and shook her head. Only Castle. But even though it was a bit unnerving that he seemed to know her so well, it also gave her belly a little jolt. Because nobody had ever known her like he did, like he really, genuinely wanted to. Other guys might have picked a fight...he made her talk it out and reassured her. And then he gave her chocolate. What a guy.

"Rick?"

He looked up from his cake. "Yeah?"

"I love you."

He grinned at her and winked. "Back at ya, Dollface," he told her in a tough voice, like he was trying to do a comic book super-cop imitation.

She rolled her eyes and smiled, taking some frosting from her cake and wiping it on his nose. Things were back to normal.

_**

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I'm not entirely sure if I like this chapter, so please don't flog me too badly if you don't like it. At least it's long, for those of you who like longer chapters. I just thought that the Kate in my story wouldn't be herself if she didn't freak out at least a little bit at some point when she really thought about going home and how things would change...that they now had this relationship to work through on their home turf. And of course, combined with the whole going home thing, it would only stand to reason that the whole ring/proposal thing would happen to invade her mind at random times. So even though Rick wasn't pressuring her himself, just the mere fact that she couldn't really forget the ring was there was enough to add a little bit to her stress level.**_

_**I took some liberties with the shaving/stubble discussion, but it's something that I did indeed notice. I'd see all of the episodes, but when I got the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2 for Christmas, I watched them again with my kids. And the stubble that was there-that isn't there now-is one thing that I noticed right away. It was never really addressed, but I think it was one of those little signs that the writers use so well, this one telling us (showing us?) that Castle was growing up and getting a little more serious. He was being a 'big boy'...shaving and going to a job. Don't know if that's accurate or not, but was just my take on the whole thing.**_

_**So...anyway...thoughts? Like I said, if you thought it sucked, please be kind.**_


	55. Chapter 55

_**Okay, um...wow. NEVER expected the response that I got for the last chapter. Thank you all for your wonderful, encouraging and sometimes hilarious comments. I remember that happening once before when I said something was yukky, and everyone really seemed to like it anyway. Maybe I just obsess too much. **_

_**Having all of that positive feedback, so quickly too(!), just made me want to fire off another chapter of this story as quickly as I could. I was inspired! Your comments really are great motivation. Truly. **_

_**And for all of you who said that the freak out was in character...thank you, thank you, thank you. This story has gone on for so long and so many of you are so complimentary in your reviews that lately I've been in the realm of worrying that I'm going to write a chapter that just makes people go 'What the he** was she thinking?", and I'll end up screwing up the whole story. But alas, now I know pretty much exactly what I want to do with the rest of the story, so I hope I can write it to be as epic as you all seem to want (and deserve, for sticking with it this long).**_

_**Now, specifically for Fabiennka, Malwi, and Shopgirrl...a special note that you should like this chapter. Won't say much more, but this is your reward for reviewing. ;-) Hope you like it. And on a similar note, ImOpenToDumbIdeas, get your ice water. And for those of you that aren't really terribly old yet...I'm just going to stick my head in the sand and pretend you are.**_

_**All of the standard disclaimers apply.**_

* * *

The chocolate cake had been eaten, and the margaritas were polished off as they sat and watched the waves roll into the shore. They stayed out on the beach until well past when they normally would have gone up to the house. They did toss the frisbee around for a while-it took a while for them to muster up enough energy to move after eating those huge slices of cake-but then they came back to the chairs once again. When they returned after the frisbee game, Rick surprised Kate by pulling her down on his chair, having her lean back against him as they watched the antics of the birds by the shore.

After they'd been sitting that way for a bit, Rick leaned over and grabbed something from the table, which turned out to be her new camera. He held it out in front of them as they snuggled on the beach chair, and he tried to aim it so he had a good picture of the two of them. The first one had their faces on the lower part of the photo only, so Kate's chin and part of her smile were cut off. He tried again, tilting the camera lower, and this time got an excellent shot of Kate's neck and chest. When they looked at the picture, Rick waggled his eyebrows and said "Now _that_ is a picture that I _really like_!", which earned him a lighthearted whack on the head from Kate. The third picture was right on the money as far as aim, so after they determined that it was okay, he set the camera down again and leaned back, his arms lightly hugging Kate in front of him. Neither of them said anything more; they just sat together and tried to memorize the last moments of their last afternoon on the beach.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After showering, Rick walked through the house, wondering where Kate had gone. But when he saw the bright orange light coming in throught the window, he knew. He let himself out of the back door, not bothering to put on shoes. Looking out over the beach, he saw right away that he was right. After walking across the deck, he started off toward her, glad that he'd remembered to grab her new camera off the table. She was once again wearing the yellow sundress, and was standing on the edge of the ocean watching the sunset with her long hair blowing out behind her in the ocean breeze. He had the picture on his phone that he'd taken over a week ago, but the quality was better on the camera. And the sight of her, standing there on the beach looking at the setting sun, was so breathtaking that he wanted a better picture. He took another few pictures with the camera before tucking it into his pocket and walking toward her. But unlike he did the other time, he walked up to her and enveloped her with his arms right away.

"Hey, stranger," she said, hanging her hands on his forearms as they went around her.

"Hey yourself."

He turned his head sideways and gave her a kiss on her cheek. "Still loving the sunset, I see."

"It's our last one." Her voice held a tone of sadness.

His arms tightened around her. "We can always come back," he told her softly. "Just say the word."

"Won't be the same." She sighed, kind of a shuddering breath, and he wondered just how emotional she was getting. Because listening to her, standing here with her like this, he was starting to feel a little melancholy too.

"I know."

The quiet acknowledgement somehow made her feel a little better, that she wasn't being silly for her advanced mourning of the end of their interlude. "So much has changed," she whispered, so softly that he almost missed it.

So much had changed. "But for the better," he told her. "Right?"

"Yeah," she confirmed, turning around in his arms. "For the better." Then, suddenly not wanting to see the moment the bright ball of the sun actually disappeared, she raised up on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss, and then buried her face in his neck and inhaled his scent. And they just stood there, wrapped around each other, while the sun finished plummeting below the horizon, signaling the end of their last day.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Since their food supply had been dwindling again, and because it was their last night, they went out to dinner. Not really having a destination in mind, they just drove around the islands and decided to stop if they saw something interesting. While they were driving, Rick spotted one of the large budget souvenir shops and swung the car into the parking lot.

"Rick?"

"Yes, my love?" he answered dramatically, trying to inject a little bit of humor. He didn't want their last night together here to be totally somber and depressing.

She rolled her eyes, but got into the mood a bit with her response. "Well, _dear_, I would hate to question your exceptional driving and navigational skills-"

He interrupted her by holding up a hand. "Wait."

"For what?"

"Just a minute..." He parked the car and leaned his head back on the headrest with a smile on his face. He didn't do anything for several seconds, and finally Kate poked him in the arm. "Rick? Are you okay?" She poked him again.

Finally, he sighed. "Fine. I just wanted to bask in the wonderful feeling of your praise of my 'exceptional driving and navigational skills'. I'm trying to commit your accolades to memory because I know you probably won't let me use those skills once we get back home."

Once again, she rolled her eyes. "I could see where that comment could come back to haunt me, but never would I have dreamed that it would haunt me mere seconds after it was spoken. I'd like to retract that statement."

"You can't do that. This isn't a courtroom. And it's already...out there," he said, gesturing wildly at the sky through the top of the convertible.

She glared at him in mock annoyance. "You're right about one thing...you're still not driving when we get home."

"Someday, my love, you _will_ change your mind. Mark my words."

"Whatever. So back to my original question, that I was _trying_ to ask you before you so rudely and flightily interrupted me...what are we doing here?"

He looked around, as if to check to see where he really was. "Oh, yeah. You need a suitcase, right?"

She looked at the place. "You really expect to find some quality luggage in here?" she asked him, gesturing at the large store.

"No. Not at all. But we need something. It just has to survive one trip and then you can throw it out for all I care."

"Fine. Let's go."

They started by browsing around in the store, looking around at all of the strange souvenir junk that people could buy, in no particular hurry. She was looking at a display of flip flops when Rick called out to her. "Hey, Kate, are these 'me'?"

She turned around to find him wearing a bright orange pair of sunglasses with fake rhinestones in the bows and surrounding the dark plastic lenses, striking a pose like he did in the 'Heat Wave' photo shoot he did at the precinct. She burst out laughing because the glasses looked just _so_ ridiculous on him. "Definitely. I think you should get them and wear them this summer at your house in the Hamptons. Dah-ling."

He took them off and pulled another pair off of the display. "Here. I think you need these." He held up a hot pink pair that had small pink plastic flamingos glued to the bows. As he handed them to her, she took a step back to get away from the gaudiness. He saw her retreat and urged her on. "Come on, Kate, you have to try them."

"No thanks. I'm afraid I would make a spectacle of myself." She grinned at him cheekily, pleased with her pun.

He tipped his head down and looked at her over the top of the rhinestone-studded orange frames. "Ooo, listen to you! You're in fine form tonight!"

She walked over and stood close to him. She leaned right up by his face and then said in a low but sultry voice, "I'm _always_ in fine form, Ricky. I thought you'd have figured that out by now." She raised an eyebrow at him before sauntering away, shaking her hair out behind her. Several feet away, she turned around to look at him, certain he would still be standing in the same place, looking at her. She was right. When she turned around, he just smiled at her and shook his head as he walked toward her.

"Should we look for that luggage now?"

"In a hurry all of a sudden?" She stepped toward him in the aisle and wrapped her arms around him, reaching around to grab his bottom in a little squeeze before quickly letting go.

His eyes widened at her overt gesture, but his neither his voice nor his words revealed his surprise. His words were measured and even. "Perhaps. I might have just discovered a better use for our time, so the sooner we can get this and dinner taken care of, the sooner we can get on to other things on the agenda."

"There's an agenda now?"

"There is after the comment about your form, which yes, is definitely quite fine. And especially after that little maneuver of yours just now."

"Glad you approve." She licked her lips. "So let's look for some luggage."

In the end, they found a duffel bag, of sorts, although it was in bright, neon colors and had the word "Florida" emblazoned across one side. Not terribly subtle, but it would work. They also found a few decent looking beach bags that they could use if the duffel bag wasn't enough. Rick told Kate to look around again, and although she looked at him skeptically, she went over to the other side of the store to look at the variey of shells in the bins, that you could buy if you had bad luck on the beach. Rick took the opportunity to run and grab a few more things on the counter, and clandestinely asked the cashier to ring them up and hide them in the duffel.

Kate, while she was walking around, found a few things that she wanted. She did her own clandestine maneuvers of piling them on a side section of a display rack. When Rick called her and told her he was finished, she waved him off, telling him she'd be out in a minute. He gave her a strange look but then exited the store, and she took her items to the cashier. The cashier gave her a knowing smile but didn't say anything else. Finally, with everything double bagged so nosy Rick couldn't peek, she exited the store. She stopped dead in her tracks when she found Rick on his knees, looking down under the car.

"What _are_ you doing?" she asked him.

He stood up and with a somewhat worried look on his face, admitted, "I can't find the car keys. I think I lost them somewhere."

She breezed past him and set her bag in the back seat. "No worries," she said as she opened the driver's side door. "They're right here," she told him, holding up the keys as she sat in the driver's seat.

His jaw dropped. He didn't lose the keys...she... "You _stole_ my keys?"

"Yup." She had a smug smile on her face.

"You _pickpocketed_ my keys? When did you..." Realization dawned on his face when he remembered when she grabbed him in the store. "You just grabbed my butt to distract me!" he exclaimed in disbelief. "You tricked me!"

"Guilty as charged. Now will you get in the car, please?"

Still reeling from her duplicity-not to mention her excellent pickpocketing skills-he silently did as he was told. She started the car and started driving.

"Why did you need to drive? Where are we going?"

"So I could take you where I want to take you."

He prompted again, "And where is that?"

"Don't know. Just shut up until we get there, okay?"

He shook his head quickly. "What? If you don't know where you're going, then how exactly can I know when we get there so I can talk again?"

She rolled her eyes. "Well now it doesn't matter since you're talking anyway." She looked around as if deciding which way to go, and then took a smooth left. It took them down a narrow road. He looked around in wonder. Where was she going?

She came to another intersecting road and turned onto that one. The roads were getting more remote and removed from civilization as they knew it. After she turned yet again, onto a little narrow clearing that could hardly even be called a road, she looked around, before finally stopping and cutting the engine. He turned to look at her. "We're here," she said, with a gleam in her eye.

"Where's 'here'?"

"I have no idea. But it's absolutely perfect for what I have in mind."

He watched her as she kicked off her shoes, and then she pulled up the sundress to reveal matching yellow panties. Which she began to slowly remove. And he could feel his groin tighten so he was instantly hard.

"Kate..." he said, still somewhat stunned, although very pleasantly stunned. But he couldn't get anything else out because in that moment, she very lithely raised up in her seat and crawled over to his, wasting no time in reaching for his belt. She leaned in for a kiss as she undid his belt, then the button of his shorts, and then the fly, pausing before undoing each item to rub her hand against the hardness that was under the clothing barriers.

"_Now _do you understand why we stopped here?" she asked, but he didn't respond, except to kiss her again. She got the message that he understood.

They didn't have much room in the car, but it didn't matter to them, and the close confines only served to heighten the sensations coursing through them. And of course, the illicitness of pulling over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with the prospect of having steamy car sex didn't hurt either.

In between kisses, Rick murmured, "Should we...move...this to...the back seat?"

She stopped for a moment and leaned back from him just a bit, and he felt the loss of her right away. "No," she said with some heavy breaths, "I'm a big girl now. I can...ride...in the front seat quite well." The innuendo about her riding _him_ wasn't lost on him, and he groaned. And then she raised both arms up in the air and he stared, transfixed, as she bent them both back down to undo clasp of her sundress at the back of her neck. When it was undone, she pulled the top down to reveal her bare breasts, which she thrust at him just a little bit. He needed no second invitation as he took one of the peaks into his mouth as he groaned again, with the groan mixing with hers this time.

After several moments of bliss from that, she pulled back a little more so she could have leverage to pull his boxers and his shorts down. When his shaft was free, she bent down toward it, and he thought she was going to take him into her mouth. And he didn't know if he could survive that. But instead, she puckered up her mouth and blew some air onto him. Then she raised her face to him, wearing a devilish smile, and said "You were looking a little hot down there, so I thought I should try to cool you off a bit."

"God," was all he managed to get out before he grabbed her behind her back and hauled her to him again, kissing her madly. Then, as he massaged her back, he felt the zipper at the back of her dress. He made short work of unzipping her dress, and then reached under it as he broke the kiss to lift the dress over her head, telling her "I want you naked..."

He threw the dress on the vacated driver's seat as she quickly undid the buttons on his shirt and spread it open. She arched her now naked body against his chest, and finally moved to straddle him fully. There was really no place for her long legs except to put one through to the opening between the bucket seats, and to put the other one around the other side of the seat, almost up by the top of the door. As she moved over him, she feld him against her now very wet core, and she told him simply, "Now."

"I couldn't agree more," he told her in a strangled voice, positioning himself and thrusting his hips forward as he pulled her down on him. The angle was different because of the confines of the car, and it seemed she could feel more of him as he began to slide in and out of her. Through the delicious, juicy pressure on her core at the motion they were creating, she could start to feel herself get weak with ecstacy. She had no power to do anything but work with him as they moved together in beautiful unison. "Oh, Kate..." She tilted her head up to the starry sky as she braced herself from behind with one hand on the console and the other hand on the armrest of the door.

Rick was lost. The surprise, along with the location, just made it more intense for him. When they left the house, he never thought he'd end up, less than an hour later, parked on a deserted road, with a naked Kate on top of him, riding him with lustful abandon. He grabbed her hips and changed their rhythm, bringing himself almost all the way out of her, so the head of his shaft was just at her entrance, and then slowly letting her sink back on him until he was buried as deeply inside of her as he could be. He watched them slide together like that, become joined together, several times. He raised his eyes and found Kate watching him watching _them_, her eyes dark with passion. Then, without warning, Kate moved from her semi-reclined state to press against him again, grabbing his head and bringing it to one of her breasts as her hips unconsciously increased their motion as she rode him in a new burst of erotic energy. She could think of no rational thought, nothing but the feel of his lips around her nipple and the feeling of his manhood in between her legs, filling her, stretching her, rubbing against that ultra sensitive nub of hers as he slid in and out of her. And those sensations were enough as she felt the first fissures of pleasure beginning in her core. Her breathing became nothing more than erratic pants, and she wasn't going to cry out, but she had no choice as her orgasm finally skyrocketed through her. "Ohhhh! Yes...Rick...yes! Oh, God, oh...oh...oh...", her cries giving way to breathy pants as she still experienced it, but could no longer form any sounds.

Rick felt her begin to lose herself, and though he tried to hold out, her release was generally too much for him. This was no exception. The woman was phenomonal, with sex appeal oozing out of her pores, and the chemistry between them was just too much for him to resist, especially when her naked body was sitting on him, around him, and he was watching and _feeling_ her release, feeling the incredible feeling as her internal muscles contracted around him. He held out longer than he thought he could, and he kept thrusting into her, trying to make the ecstacy last as long as possible for both of them. Finally, he felt his own release burst from him to spill deep inside her, as he, too, found that he was now incapable of speech. Gutteral moans were the only thing that escaped from his lips as his climax took him, and he was so possessed by her that he couldn't have stopped them if he'd tried.

She collapsed on him, and somehow he found the control on the side of the seat to recline it a little bit. They stayed that way for quite a while, regaining their breath, their energy, their cognizance of the time, the place and anything that didn't have to do with them.

Her voice was soft and quiet by his neck. "We just had car sex. Guess we can add that to the list."

"Really hot car sex." She could hear the smug tone in his voice. "Really, _really_ hot, _unexpected_ car sex."

"Better than when you were a teenager?"

"We didn't have a car for part of that time, so..." he trailed off.

She raised up a little bit and looked at him, surprised. "You never had car sex?"

"Ummm...no?" He seemed a little embarrassed. "Several other places, including the maintenance room of an apartment building, but no, not in a car. Until now."

"Wow." She sighed. "Well, that's kind of cool. Because I never did either."

"Really?"

"Uh huh."

"No way! You? Miss Wild Child Tat girl?"

"No lie. I was ready once, but then Cole, the intended other half of my potential inauguration into the world of vehicular coitus, lost his chance when the little shithead came home rip-roaring drunk and stoned and his parents took away his car right before the big night. By the time he got it back, I'd discovered that he was extending his 'tutoring sessions' with some slut in her bedroom while her parents were away."

"Ouch." And then he laughed. "Well, the joke is definitely on him now. If Cole only knew what he'd missed..." he finished with another chuckle.

"Oh, he knows. It gets better. I was working undercover vice once years ago and busted him for solicitation. I didn't even realize it was him at first. And it was such poetic justice reminding him who I was, that I was a cop, and watching him look me over and see what he lost out on by banging that teasing tutor. Let's just say I was not dressed demurely. Not trashy, but definitely not demurely. And the poor boy's eyes just about popped out of his head when he realized it was me."

He laughed again, then sobered quickly, before exclaiming, "Hey!"

"What?"

"We lost our car sex virginity to each other! How cool is that?"

She rolled her eyes. But it was actually kind of cute. A first, for them, together, even though it wasn't something that they'd ever be able to tell their children about. And the thought flitted into her brain so easily that it took her a minute to even realize it was out of place. Children? Oh, brother. She was losing it again.

So in an attempt to not freak out (because the rest of the chocolate cake was still back at the house, after all), she decided that it was time to move and start putting herself back together. To get some clothing on. She reached to the back seat and grabbed a beach towel that had been left there, and moved off of Rick.

After cleaning herself up and slipping back into her dress, she asked Rick about dinner. "Oh, yeah," he said. "I almost forgot. Some wild, wanton woman kidnapped me and had her way with me," he joked.

"Wonder who that could be? Think maybe she was an alien?" she chided.

"All of her...parts...certainly felt human, so I'd say not." He watched as she got out of the car and came over to the passenger side. "What are you doing?"

"I don't really have the energy to drive anymore, for some reason. So take me somewhere and get me some food."

He slid over the center console into the driver's seat and she slid into the passenger seat. "Where to, m'lady?"

"I need protein. Steak. Lots of meat. For some reason," she said, trailing a fingertip up his thigh, "I just need some protein right now."

He gave her a sideways look as he turned the car around. "Protein it is. I could probably use some myself right too." And with a sexy smile aimed at his lady, he sped off down the road in search of food.

_**

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Well, there you go. I hope that satisfies everyone's craving for a little bit more Florida smut. **_

_**Thoughts...love it, like it or just so-so? (Notice I didn't put a 'hate it' category in there...wishful thinking.) Let me know!**_


	56. Chapter 56

_**Hello all! Welcome to chapter 56! **_

_**One note: In this chapter, I reference something from way back in chapter 11 (boy, that sounds like bankruptcy!). So if you don't have a good memory, you may want to go back and skim the part of that chapter after the last section break before reading this chapter.**_

_**Disclaimer: The usual...don't own any of the characters, the beach, the mansion, the car, the plane or any of it. Darn.**_

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The steaks at the little restaurant they found were cooked and seasoned to perfection, as was the rest of the meal. They opted out of dessert, partially because they were stuffed from the good food, and partially because they still had chocolate cake to eat back at the house. So when they were done with the meal, they slowly drove back to the house, with Rick driving. He'd told her with a lusty leer that he couldn't possibly sit in the passenger seat again without getting all sorts of wild thoughts running through his brain, courtesy of her pre-dinner choice of activity.

They each carried their own purchases into the house, with Rick eyeing Kate's bags suspiciously. "So you never told me what you bought," he said casually.

"Oh, just...stuff," she answered, every bit as casually as he had asked. He kept eyeing the bags as they walked up the stairs to their bedroom. Finally at the top of the stairs, she said "You are just dying of curiosity, aren't you?"

"I didn't say a thing!" he protested. She raised her eyebrow at him in response. "Okay, fine, I know...I was not saying it very loudly. So yes, I'm wondering what you could have possibly bought in that store that has you so secretive."

"I'm not secretive, Rick. I'm simply biding my time until I can present my purchase to you appropriately."

His eyes got big and he coughed. "My God, Kate, did you buy one of those little bikinis that they had there? I don't know if I could take that after the car...thing...before."

She smiled at him evilly. "What's wrong, Rick? Are you saying you're getting too old for that kind of aerobic activity? And you have nothing to complain about anyway! _I'm_ the one who had to go hopping over seats and stretch out between the back seat and the front seat. You just had to...sit there."

He closed his eyes in appreciation, as if remembering the incident. "And just 'sitting there' has never before been _that_ good."

She snapped her fingers in front of his face, causing him to break his reverie as his eyes blinked open. "Back to the here and now, Rick," she told him as she walked down the hall and into the bedroom. She dropped her bags on the bed and turned to him. "I actually got you something. And no, it's not a bikini. I figured you had all you could handle for a while with the red one and the yellow one I already had. Close your eyes," she instructed.

He did as he was told and he could hear her rummaging around in her bag. Then she felt her grab his hand and she wrapped his fingers around a flat, narrow box. "Okay, open your eyes and take a look."

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was her chewing on her bottom lip, like she was worried about what he'd think. Then he looked down at the box, and a thought stirred in the back of his mind. "This isn't..." he said as he opened the box. And then a big smile bloomed on his face as he took out a souvenir photo frame. The thick border of the frame was supposed to look like sand, and it had little beach-themed decorations around it, like shells and flip flops and fish, along with a little sign that said 'Captiva'.

"You said something when you bought me the camera about having a picture of the two of us on your desk. So I saw the frame and I remembered that, and it was kind of impulsive, and I know it's really kind of cheesy..." she trailed off.

He looked back down at the frame and then at her again, and then he leaned in and gave her a kiss. "I love it. Thank you. And you really have no idea how cool this is."

She was still unsure if he really liked it or was just being nice, so she continued, "I know it doesn't really go with the decor of your loft, so..."

"Kate, my loft decor doesn't really matter. A home is a place where you have memories, and this is where one of those memories will sit. So it will fit in just fine."

"Really, it was impulsive and-"

"Kate? Can you hold that thought for just a minute?" He held up a finger and went over to the duffel bag where he had had the clerk hide a few of his clandestine purchases that she hadn't seen. He withdrew something from the bag and walked over to her, handing her a box that looked an awful lot like the one she'd just handed to him. She gave him a puzzled look and then tentatively took the box as he told her, "I had my own clandestine purchases too, you know. This was one of them. Go ahead."

She did as she was told, and she took another frame out of the box, which she recognized as the other style that she saw at the store. She laughed and her uncertainty about her gift to him drained out of her as she asked him, "So you bought me this, and I bought you that?"

"Looks that way," he told her with a Castle smile that spoke volumes. "Great minds think alike."

"That's just...weird. Hey, that cashier gave me a strange look when I was checking out. I bet that was why. She knew that you'd just bought almost the same thing."

"She didn't say something to you?"

"Nothing...just a funny look like she knew something that I didn't. Guess she did."

"Well, I saw that frame and had pretty much the same thought as you, about the pictures. After we come clean with everyone, of course. Can't have a picture of us sitting out right away or that will blow the whole plan. And just to ease your mind, I did actually think about getting two of them, so I could have one too, but then I decided against it at the last minute. And I thought if you hated it, then I'd just appropriate it for myself."

"Always a plan, huh?"

"Of course."

"I did get you something else," she confessed.

He got a look on his face that was a cross between excited and intrigued, kind of like he did when they were talking about surprises and birthday presents when they'd gone out for pizza after their boat trip. "Really?" he asked, the little boy in him starting to peek out.

"Although I might live to regret it later, yes." She walked over to her bag and took out the pair of orange sunglasses with the rhinestones that he had tried on in the store.

"Yes!" he said when he saw the glasses, doing a fist pump. "These things are great! They're so gaudy that they just really make a statement."

"I'm still not sure that I want to be around you when you do make that statement though."

He just grinned in response, and then popped the sunglasses on his face as he struck a pose, while Kate rolled her eyes and shook her head.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Hours later, the clothes were packed into the suitcases, duffel bag, and assorted beach bags, more of the chocolate cake was eaten and the house was put back together as much as possible in preparation for their departure. They'd laid out the clothing they wanted to wear home the next day, and had changed into sleepwear and were relaxing on the bed. By mutual consent, they were both too tired to do much of anything except cuddle and mumble to each other sleepily about random things until sleep took them.

But several hours into their sleep, something made Kate rise into consciousness. As she fluttered her eyes open, she turned over to look at Rick, who...wasn't there. She waited a minute to see if he was in in the bathroom, but the room was silent. So she got up out of the bed and grabbed a robe. She knotted the belt as she started silently across the room to the door to go look for him, but stopped short when she heard a sound on the stairs. Not knowing where Rick was, she flashed back to when Billy had burst into their house and she unconsciously reached for her gun before remembering that it was back in New York. Looking around in the dim light, she quickly reached for the vase on the table. She took out the flowers and got in a little crouch behind the closest chair, holding the vase by the slimmer neck and preparing to use it as a weapon if needed.

She saw the door slowly open a little wider and she tensed herself. Then as the familiar silhouette walked through the door, she relaxed. Stepping out from behind the chair, she said, "Next time-".

But she didn't get to say any more because Rick, thoroughly not expecting her to be standing behind him, jumped in surprise and yelped at her voice as he whipped around toward her. "God, Beckett! Are you trying to give me heart failure?" he asked, breathing heavily, grabbing the edge of the table for support.

"What are you doing skulking around in the middle of the night in the dark?"

"I..." he took a couple of deep breaths, "I remembered something and then I...oh, forget it. Just come with me. I was just coming back up here to wake you up anyway."

She stepped out from behind the chair and put the vase down. "You were? Why?"

"Were you going to bean me with that vase?" he asked, looking at it as she put the artificial flowers back in it.

"If I'd needed to," she told him, and he gave the heavy piece of pottery another look and shuddered a bit. "Anyway..." she prompted.

"Yeah. Come on." He grabbed her hand and led her down the stairs and out the back door onto the deck.

"Where are we going? And why? Rick, it's the middle of the night." Then, given the time and the location, she had a thought. "Rick, I already packed my red bikini. And the yellow one, for that matter."

He stopped and tugged on her hand so she faced him. "Did you have to bring that up?" At his words, she glanced down pointedly at his lower half. He caught her gaze, and the meaning. "Unintentional wording, but yes, just the mention of those bikinis might bring _that_ up too." He shook his head. "But no, that is not why I brought you out here. Follow me." He started walking again, but then stopped again before adding, "And don't say any more about those two particular primary colors." Then he continued to lead her down to the beach, but then turned and walked over to the other side of the house, where they'd hardly ever been before. And there, at the edge of the beach, was a tiny little fire in a tiny little firepit.

"You came out here in the middle of the night to build a fire? Let me guess...you had a dream about being a Boy Scout and you had the overwhelming urge to live out the fantasy by immediately building a campfire?" she surmised in a dry tone.

"No. Even better! Sit down."

She gave him a pointed look. "Why?"

He returned her pointed look. "Kate, how many times have I told you..."

"Just go with it," they both said in unison.

At least he had spread a couple of towels out on the sand, so she acquiesced, even though she felt silly sitting on a towel on a beach in her nightgown and robe in the middle of the night. In front of a teeny tiny campfire, no less.

She watched him and he turned around to get something, and then held out a stick to her as he sat down. And on the end of the stick was stuck...a hot dog?

She took the stick and eyed it suspiciously, and then eyed _him_ suspiciously. "You got me out of bed to come down here in my nightgown to...roast weenies?"

"Well, no, technically you were already out of bed, so I had nothing to do with that part. But yes, we do need to roast a weenie. Or weenies. I told you the first day that you can't leave until you've had a hot dog on the beach. And you may not have realized it, but we are running out of time pretty fast. So, unless you want to eat it for breakfast, I suggest you get roasting," he finished, putting his stick into the fire.

He looked over at her after about a minute, and she was still looking between him and the hot dog, but made no effort to put it in the fire. "You really expect me to sit here and do this?"

"Of course," he said matter-of-factly.

"For how long?"

"Till it's done."

"And then what?"

"Geez, Kate, I thought you were quicker than this. Then...you...eat...it," he said slowly.

"You want me to eat it."

"Yes."

"Did you disinfect the stick?"

"Asked by the person who used to drink the coffee at the precinct before I bought the cappucino machine. Kate, really."

"So the answer is no?"

"I think the fire will take care of any bad little germies."

"If I roast a weenie with you, can I go back to bed?"

"After you eat it. Then I will escort you back to bed. Well, after we safely extinguish the fire, of course."

"I really have to eat it," she stated, looking for him to confirm, yet hoping he wouldn't.

"Yes, you really have to eat it." He reached behind him and held something up. "Look, I even brought mustard!"

So she rolled her eyes and stuck her weenie stick in the fire.

After a few minutes, Rick started to regale her with stories from some of his book tours. Pretty soon, she was wide awake and laughing with him. She leaned into him as they sat in front of the small fire at the edge of the beach and turned the sticks around to evenly roast the hot dogs. When it was time to eat them, they drizzled mustard on them and ate them directly off the stick. Rick looked chagrinned when after he took a bite one side of his hot dog, the rest of that side broke off and fell to the sand. After he picked it up and threw it into the fire, Kate put a dot of mustard on the end of hers and held it out to him. He raised an eyebrow at her in question, and when she nodded, he took a bite of her hot dog.

"What a woman...sharing her weenie with me," he observed with a sappy grin.

"Please don't say that around anyone else. That just sounded...weird."

He thought about it, and then said "Point taken."

They finished eating the hot dogs, and then threw sand on top of the fire to extinguish it. After they were sure it was out, they meandered back into the house and up to their bedroom. They settled into the big bed together for the last time, a fact that wasn't lost on Kate as she looped an arm over Rick's chest.

"We've had hot dogs on the beach. Our vacation is now complete," Rick told her, sounding sleepy.

But even though parts of both of them were happy to be going home, neither one of them wanted to admit to the other one that there were other parts of them that were saddened at the thought of this vacation, this incredible interlude, coming to an end. And both of them snuggled just a bit closer to the other as they drifted into their last Florida sleep, together.

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_**A couple of notes: first, the 'Why' that Beckett says toward the end (when Castle tells her to sit) was written with me envisioning how she said the 'why?' when she was talking to Natalie Rhodes during the 'Is Castle gay?' conversation in the Nikki Heat episode. **_

_**I probably could have gone a bit farther with the weenie and the weenie stick innuendo, but I didn't. For now. But maybe I'll think of something for later.**_

_**And for those of you who have been waiting for them to get back to New York, IT'S ALMOST HERE!**_

_**As usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts!**_


	57. Chapter 57

_**The Plan is back! Now if the fanfic site would just stop having problems, that would be great. Just when I wanted to upload this chapter several hours ago, that portion of the site was broken. These things shouldn't happen on Castle Mondays!**_

_**Disclaimer: The usual. Don't own anyone. Have a lot of admiration for the creators and the writers for the wonderful characters they share with us.**_

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Kate took one last look at the house as the limo drove them away from it. Seeing it locked up tightly, knowing that they wouldn't be coming back-at least anytime soon, and maybe not ever-filled her with a feeling of sadness. She almost felt like crying, and she had to take a deep breath so she wouldn't do just that. And she felt stupid for it. It was just a house, after all. But her life had changed in that house. It had changed dramatically, and now she had to leave it and go back to her old life. The world up in New York was reality, and the world down here was like a fantasy, with the only constant between the two worlds being her. She was different now; she'd changed since she'd come down here. But how would those changes translate back to reality?

She felt a hand squeeze her own, and she looked over at the man that had initiated that light squeeze. At the look on her face, the grin fell off of his. "What's wrong?"

She took a deep breath. "I just feel like Rod Serling's voice is going to come out of the speakers and ask me if I'm ready to enter The Twilight Zone."

Rick looked at her quizzically. "You didn't have enough coffee this morning, did you?" he asked her, implying that she really wasn't making sense.

She reached over and lightly swatted him on the chest. "Oh, shut up."

He was quiet for a few seconds, but then he started humming the theme for 'The Twilight Zone'. She leveled a glare on him. "What?" he said innocently. "I wasn't saying anything! But now that I am, I repeat, what's wrong? In words that make sense this time, please."

She sighed. "It's just more of the same. Just wondering how everything will work out when we get back home. Us. Together. People."

"Ah," he said, knowingly. "Well, we're still us, we'll be together, and people will be people."

"You realize that you just said basically nothing of any substance, right?"

"Well, if you can figure that out, then you also should realize that you're worrying about absolutely nothing. Nothing's going to change when we get home, except for the fact that we'll know more people there and it will be colder. Ugh." He shuddered as he spoke the last words. "Oh, and I won't have to wonder where you're spending your time out of the precinct anymore, because you'd better be spending it with me."

"Rick..."

"Kate, we've had this conversation already, on the beach. With chocolate cake, remember?"

"Yeah." Then, more softly, she said, "I'll miss it, you know?"

"Yeah," he said, pursing his lips together and nodding his head thoughtfully. "I do love a good piece of chocolate cake."

Her head whipped to face his and she rolled her eyes. "I'm serious."

"I am too. Good chocolate cake is hard to find." But then, he put the joking aside, and the serious, sincere Rick came back. She could see the change in his eyes. He took his hand out of hers and put his arm around her instead, pulling her to him. "I know. I'll miss it too."

She looked up at him again, right into his eyes. "Thanks for kidnapping me, Rick. Even if you didn't intend to do any of this."

"You do believe me about that, don't you?"

She gave him a feather light kiss on his lips. "Yes, I believe you. Mainly because there is just no way that even you could have planned something a wild as these last two weeks have been. Um...Billy?" Then her face took on a brilliant smile and she could hardly contain her mirth. "And, oh, my God, the _tallywhacker!_ How could I have forgotten about the _tallywhacker!_" And the mood was immediately lightened as she started snickering, remembering Billy's insults to his manhood.

Rick got a sour look on his face at the reminder. "Please, Beckett, don't remind me."

"Well," she snickered, "at least I could now tell Billy, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your tallywhacker is not puny and you definitely do know what to do with it. Although you are _still old and you do still live with your mama._" Kate lapsed into a Billy-style voice for the last part of her comment, which had Rick cringing away from her.

"Hey, I thought we had a deal! No more 'Billy-voice', and you have my undying love and devotion forever. Remember that?"

His words resurrected her memory of their talk the night she told him she loved him, when she'd done her last mini Billy imitation. "Damn. Sorry. But I thought about the tallywhacker and my mind just kind of ran away with it."

"Feel free to think about my tallywhacker whenever you want, but do not," he told her, leaning in by her ear, "ever," he said before kissing her jawline, "talk like Billy," he emphasized, looking her in her eyes,"again."

She bit her bottom lip and gave him a little smile. "I think that can be arranged, but it may cost you down the road."

He gazed knowingly at her, the cocky grin back on his face. "I'll look forward to paying up."

And the limousine continued to speed them toward the airport in Fort Myers, bringing them ever closer to going home.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As far as she could tell, the plane was parked pretty much right where it was when they'd walked off of it over two weeks earlier. Of course, she couldn't be entirely sure because by the time she'd gotten off of the plane, she wasn't terribly observant due to the quantity of wine she'd consumed during their little game of hangman. Who would have known that the simple game of hangman could be so intoxicating? Well, she supposed that it had something to do with the Richard Castle method of hangman that she'd been exposed to.

The limo stopped near the plane and she could see that the steps were already down. By the time they'd crawled out of the limo, a man was coming down the steps and walked over to Rick to shake his hand.

"Ted! Good to see you again! Thanks for picking us up."

"No problem. The weather looks good most of the way, although it's a bit windy right now. Some of the predictions are that the winds might die down within the hour, so I'd like to wait just a bit to take off, if that's okay with you."

"Sounds good to me. We're in no hurry."

The men chatted for a few more minutes and then he, Kate and the limo driver started unloading their various bags from the limo into the plane. It amazed her how much more she'd accumulated in just a couple of weeks. And the 'biggest' thing-not size-wise but importance-wise-was in a little jewelry box tucked safely inside of her suitcase. It was funny how that little ring kept sneaking into her thoughts at the most random of times. And each time it did, she still got that funny feeling in her stomach, and that feeling of uncertainty washed over her.

After everything was loaded onto the plane, the pilot, Ted, shut the door. Kate walked around, remembering their trip down there and how much everything had changed since then. She remembered how she'd inadvertently opened up their discussions of the debacle of the previous summer. And she'd only had a couple of sips of wine then! She hadn't known it then, but they'd started to get closer then, to let down some of their walls. It had started them on the path to where they found themselves now.

She had a hand on the back of one of the 'comfy leather chairs' that she'd sat in on the way down when she felt some arms encircle her waist from behind. She instinctively leaned back into the chest that was connected to those arms, and felt that familiar contentment seep into her. That contentment was something that she'd never felt before when she was on this plane two weeks ago. Now, that feeling was pervasive whenever she was in contact with Rick like this.

She felt his lips on her cheek and then she heard the words, "So, what are you thinking about so intently?"

"Just about the last time I was on this plane, and how you got me drunk," she joked.

"Hey! You got yourself drunk with your bad guesses. I may have...uh...facilitated that a bit, but it was all you."

She laughed. "You supplied the wine, _and_ you opened the second bottle," she countered.

"Hey, you were on a roll. I may have enabled you to get drunk, but at least I didn't take advantage of you."

"Then."

He turned her around in his arms, but kept them circled around her. "Might I remind you exact _who_ seduced _whom_ the first time we were together?"

She smiled up at him seductively. "I didn't see you putting up much of a fight."

He looked appalled. "Of course not! Do you think I'm an absolute idiot? You want to seduce me, Detective, you go right ahead. Especially like _that_!" He raised his eyebrows at her to punctuate his statement, and then he captured her lips in a kiss. And whether intentional or not, the kiss was much like their first kiss, which was actually many soft, little kisses peppered over her waiting lips. But this time, she wasn't as stunned as she was that first time, and she returned them, keeping them small and chaste.

But with the fire that seemed to always burn between them, chaste simply couldn't be maintained for long. Soon, the kisses started getting a little bit faster. Mouths opened. Tongues teased, and then tongues tasted. Arms and hands caressed through the barriers of their clothing. Moans were heard. And when that first moan was heard, Kate broke away.

"God, how do you do this to me?" she asked him, trying to catch her breath.

"I don't know, but you do it to me too."

"Well, we have to stop. Why don't we go sit down in those comfy leather chairs-"

"Why?" he interrupted.

"Why what?"

"Why do we have to stop?" he said, in something akin to a whining tone.

"Castle, we're on a plane going home! We have a ruse to maintain. And...and...we're on a plane!" she repeated, trying to find some reason why they couldn't go any farther.

"So? Haven't you heard of the mile high club?"

"Castle, we're sitting on the ground yet."

"Kate, can I remind you of something?" She looked at him quizzically. "Come here," he said, taking her hand and leading toward the back of the plane.

When they entered the bedroom, he gestured toward the bed. "That," he told her, "is a bed. People do lots of things in beds. They sleep. And they do other," he said, bending over to kiss her neck, "more pleasurable things. Even in beds on planes."

She knew what he meant. There could be no doubt whatsoever as to what he meant. "Castle! We can't..." she trailed off as his lips started trailing kisses down her neck toward her collarbone. His hand strayed under the hem of her shirt, and she reveled in the touch of his warm fingers as they gently played over the soft skin of her back.

"Oh, but we can. This is a private plane. Emphasis on the word _private_. And Kate, they didn't put a bed in here just to take up space, you know." His lips resumed the assault on her neck and she felt her willpower slipping. "And we're a hell of a lot more enclosed and secluded here than we were last night in the car. The plane door is closed, and Ted has to fly the plane. That just leaves us, and this bed, all alone for three whole hours, maybe more. Whatever will we do for all of that time?"

And he gave her that cocky yet sexy grin that told her that he had a good idea of _exactly_ what they would do for all of that time.

* * *

_**I hope you all enjoyed some of the little continuity bits that I put in this chapter: remembering Billy, Ted the pilot, the hangman drinking game. We've come full circle now (well, almost), so I thought it would be fun to reference a few of the earlier moments of this story.**_

_**Before everyone gets irate with me for ending it there, I will say that I have the next chapter at least half done already, and without saying too much, it contains what a lot of you have been hinting at (and also quite blatantly asking for) ;) . It just got too long and I had to split it into two chapters. Imagine that...ME writing something that was too LONG! (Sarcasm intended.) So leave me some of those little ol' reviews and let me know what you think, so I get motivated to finish chapter 58 faster! **_


	58. Chapter 58

_**Here is the next installment. Hopefully, the site will start cooperating with us all so everyone can actually read the chapter right away. I really wish they'd post some sort of an update just to let people know they're working on the issues, and also what works and doesn't work.**_

_**By the way, I have a twitter account (xxGoogiexx), so I've been trying to post on there when I update stories. **_

_**Disclaimer: the usual...don't own anyone.**_

_**Without further ado...**_

* * *

_"Oh, but we can. This is a private plane. Emphasis on the word private. And Kate, they didn't put a bed in here to take up space, you know." His lips resumed the assault on her neck and she felt her willpower slipping. "And we're a hell of a lot more enclosed and secluded here than we were last night in the car. The plane door is closed, and Ted has to fly the plane. That just leaves us, and this bed, all alone for three whole hours, maybe more. Whatever will we do for all of that time?"_

_And he gave her that cocky yet sexy grin that told her that he had a good idea of exactly what they would do for all of that time._

Somehow his hands had found their way around to the front of her, and by the time she realized it, he had managed to unbutton most of her blouse already. "Rick..." she uttered between kisses, but that was all she was able to say. Finally, she gave up and grabbed his head, bringing his lips to hers for a frenzied kiss of clashing lips and tongues. By then he had her blouse fully unbuttoned, and he pulled her hands from his face so he could rid her of the blouse. When that was discarded, he made short work of her bra, freeing her breasts so he could bend and tease the stiff peaks with his hot mouth. She threaded her hands through his hair, drawing him to her, anchoring him to her so he could keep doing what he was doing, because it felt oh, so good.

Her hands, as they massaged the back of his head, came into contact with the collar of his shirt and she realized that she had some work to do. "No fair," she murmured, and she went to work on the buttons of his shirt as his mouth kissed his way up her chest to find her lips again. But in her haste, her fingers fumbled a little bit and she was having problems until she said "The hell with it," and pulled at the front of the shirt, scattering the buttons around the room as they gave way. When it was open, she bent down to kiss his chest as she pulled the shirt over his arms and tossed it away.

"My shirt..." he managed to say, somewhat in shock that she had just basically ripped his shirt off him.

"Oh, cry me a river, Castle. Get a new one from your suitcase," she told him, with no sympathy whatsoever in her tone.

He shook his head. "No, I don't mind at _all_. I mean, that-you practically ripping my shirt off me-that was just...really hot," he told her with a sexy smile before claiming her mouth again in another searing kiss.

Before long, they had each others pants undone, and Kate was stepping out of hers when she lost her balance and fell against Rick, pushing them both back onto the bed. Belatedly, they realized the plane was now moving and the sudden movement had caused their unbalance. "Well, that was an advantageous little stumble," Rick said coyly, reaching around the back of Kate to grab her bottom as she was sprawled on top of him. "I rather like this position."

"But you still have too many clothes on," she told him, sitting up and finishing the work she had started of divesting him of his pants.

When she had taken care of that, he looked appreciatively at her naked top half and asked "Now who's overdressed?"

"I'm sure you can take care of that," she told him, just a bit breathless.

"Are you sure? I mean, we can go into the other room and sit in those nice comfy seats and prepare for takeoff."

She narrowed her eyes at him in a challenging gaze. "You started this. So shut up, Castle, and get me naked."

He sat up a little and began to follow orders. "God, I love a bossy woman. Especially one who tells me to get her naked. And I have another type of takeoff in mind anyway." Obviously, she'd changed her mind about the activity they were now engaged in, he thought with some humor. And somewhere along the line, they managed to pull back the covers on the bed so they could lay on the cool sheets underneath, which they found were satin. "Oh, God, satin sheets? This just gets better and better!"

Hearing his comment about bossy women, once her pants were removed, she crawled over him again, straddling his lower half. "So if you like bossy women, does that mean that you'll be comfortable with letting me..._drive_? I do know how to drive a..._stick shift_... you know."

Despite the fact that they'd been together so many times already, she still knew how to surprise him with her innuendo, at just the right time. He gulped and stared at her. "Uh..."

She leaned her head down toward his face, letting her nipples graze against his chest and letting the lower half of her body come into intimate contact with the lower half of his. She moved her body to rub against his teasingly. She kissed the one corner of his mouth, and then the other corner, before claiming his lips with hers in a languid kiss, all the while continuing to move against him, driving the both of them a little closer to a state of sexual insanity.

The movements that she was engaging in with her body and her hips had put the tip of his manhood right at her entrance. And she was ready for him...her body was _so_ ready. She suspected he was more than ready too, so she asked him, "Are you ready for me to drive?" Then before waiting for a response, she pressed her hips slowly downward onto him, taking him inside her very wet, very aroused core.

"Oh, yeah..." he said in a low voice, almost like a moan, the statement sort of being answer to her question but also being just an exclamation as to the sensations that were swamping him as they were joined. When he could feel himself inside her, he unconsciously grabbed her around her back, and moved his hands down so he was kneading her bottom with his hands as she moved on him, over him.

"Beckett, your...shifting from third to fourth gear is really...smooth," he told her with a sharp intake of breath as she moved.

She raised up more, so she was sitting, and she rocked her hips against him, on him, around him. His hands reached around from her back to travel over her stomach and up to her breasts. He palmed them with his hands, kneading them, and eventually grasping her nipples and rolling them between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. He could feel the vibration of the engines of the plane, along with the motion as it moved toward the runway, and it just added a new dimension to the experience.

Neither of them realized the plane's motion had stopped; they were too caught up in each other and the moment. Kate had leaned back down to enjoy some languid kisses with Rick as their bodies continued to move together, so neither of them realized right away when the voice of the pilot came on the intercom, telling them that they were second in line for takeoff. As their kisses changed from languid to more fevered, Rick unconsciously grabbed her hips to help her move on him.

After a few more kisses, their lips broke apart and their surprised gazes met each other when they realized that the planes engines were revving up. They could feel the increased vibration from the engines, and then a small lurch as the plane started moving. They looked into each others eyes as Kate said, "Castle, we're taking off!"

"In more ways than one. Don't you even think about going anywhere!" he ordered.

The plane gained speed as it began to race down the runway, and they both found themselves sliding a bit on the satin sheets. The feeling of speed, of moving, of the vibration from the engines, along with the heat they were generating together was just too much for them. "Stop? Now?" she panted. "You've got to be kidding." She started moving over him again, letting him slide almost all the way out of her before pushing herself back around him fully again. She was beginning to feel the first inklings of her impending release about to overtake her. And from the look on Rick's face, he was feeling about the same thing.

But when the nose of the plane lifted off the ground, it caused a shift in the angle of the bed, and of the people on the bed. And that angle, and gravity, and speed, slammed her down on him more than she had been before, more than she thought possible. She sat more fully up to keep her balance, and he grabbed her hips instinctively. And that was just too much for her to hold out against, and was more than enough to send her into bliss. And she closed her eyes and tipped her head to the ceiling as she moaned "Oh, God...oh...Riiiiiick...", followed by a breathy series of moans, while she felt nothing but her own climax, and her lover inside of her succumbing to his own release as his shaft pumped deep within her, his own voice echoing her satisfied moan.

After she rode the wonderful aftershocks, trying to prolong the feeling as long as she could, she lowered herself down onto Rick's chest, laying her head next to his on the pillow. Neither could speak for several minutes; they just let their breath mingle as their breathing returned to normal and the haze of ecstacy lifted from their brains.

Finally, Rick was the one to speak. "I'm never traveling by commercial airline again."

"I won't always be flying with you, big boy."

"Doesn't matter. After that, I don't think I'll ever be able to experience another takeoff without...achieving liftoff myself, if you know what I mean."

"That vivid imagination of yours again?"

"Uh huh. My vivid imagination, combined with the memory of...this..." he trailed off.

They were silent for another several minutes, and both were drifting closer to sleep when a thought occurred to Kate. He felt the smile on her face as she laid against his neck. "What's so funny?" he asked.

She raised her head up to look at him. "You mentioned the mile-high club before. But unfortunately, I don't think either of us lasted anywhere close to a mile. That take-off kind of did us in. And I don't think there's any bragging rights for the five hundred foot club."

He looked thoughtful for a moment. "You may be right. The five hundred foot club does sound a little pathetic."

"Really pathetic."

"You know, I was thinking...we'd probably have to do something about that then. So we're not totally pathetic." And then in a very un-pathetic move, he flipped them over on the bed so he was now over her, and remarkably enough, they were still joined.

She knew what she was feeling, and after what they just experienced, she was surprised to say the least. "You're...how..._already_?" she asked him.

"It would appear that way. What can I say? I have great inspiration. You should be flattered," he told her before capturing her mouth again in a searing kiss.

And some time later, they did indeed redeem themselves out of the pathetic range of the aviation coitus benchmark to very rightfully earn their places in the mile-high club.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Looking out the window, now almost fully dressed again, Kate remarked that it was apparent that they were getting close to home because she could start to see patches of snow on the ground here and there.

Rick had his suitcase open on the bed and was trying to find a new shirt that he could wear. Settling on one, he took it out and shook it a bit before putting it on. "Did you find all of the buttons?"

"Yes, although I'm not sure what good they're going to do you. I actually ripped the shirt! I'm sorry...I don't normally go ripping shirts off of guys backs. I'll get you a new one."

"Are you kidding? Kate, you _ripped_ a shirt off of me! I said it at the time, but do you know how incredibly cool that is? That you ripped my clothes off me? I just may have that shirt framed and hang it in my office!"

She rolled her eyes. "Castle, watch out or the windows might explode from the pressure of your ego cloud. And if you tell anyone about that, that will be the last time I help you get rid of your clothes."

"Spoilsport! You know I can't resist you in a string bikini. It's just nice to know that you want me pretty badly too sometimes."

'Too much and all the time', she thought quickly. But then she focused on his first word. "Spoilsport? What do you mean, spoilsport? Did you or did you not just," she looked around the room as if she expected someone else to be there, and lowered her voice before she spoke again, "have your wild way with me, twice? On a plane?"

"Exactly. But from the sounds of it, you're still a wee bit embarrassed about it. Kate, uh, _private_ plane? That means_ privacy_. Besides, we've been outside before, doing...stuff, and you didn't have issues. Well, except for the beach thing with the yellow bikini and the couple that walked by..."

"But we're not outside anymore, and we're not on vacation, and we just can't go have wild sex anymore, anytime and anywhere we want to. We're going home. We're going back to real life. And we can't be that wild anymore."

"I disagree."

"Of course you would." She rolled her eyes.

"No, I disagree that we can't be that wild. Because we can, if we want to. We just have to watch our...spontaneity more from now on."

"Yup, the honeymoon's over." Then as soon as the words were spoken, she clapped a hand over her mouth in horror at the implication, as Rick's jaw dropped in amazement at her words.

"Honeymoon?" he asked, with a certain tone of shock in his voice. "Does that mean..."

"No!" She turned and paced across the room. "No!" she said again, for emphasis. "It's just...you made that comment several days ago about the honeymoon aspect, and we were just talking about spontaneous sex, which is traditionally what honeymoons are all about, and the term just kind of popped out. It's nothing. Nothing. Do _not_ read anything into it."

He didn't say anything for a couple of minutes, but then he spoke, and he had a smug grin on his face when he did. "Kate?"

Seeing the grin, she was almost afraid to answer. "What?"

"It was a great pre-engagement honeymoon."

"Assuming, again?"

"Oh, I'm not assuming. I know it'll happen. Someday you'll put that ring on. You're want me too much. Remember, you're ripping shirts off of me now."

She pursed her lips and shook her head. That man...he was just too cocky for his own good sometimes. "Ugh!" she exclaimed, stalking into the other part of the plane and leaving him grinning after her.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As they landed at LaGuardia, they sat in the 'comfy leather seats' and watched their descent out of the tiny windows, holding hands. Ted, the pilot, glided the plane in for a wonderfully smooth landing, and then once they were off the runway, his voice came on the intercom, telling them that they would have to taxi for a while; the runway was quite a distance from the private air charter area that they needed to go to. Afterwards, Kate felt her hand being squeezed and she looked away from the view outside to see Rick's face gazing at her intently.

"We're home," he said simply.

"We are." She took a deep breath.

"Know what?"

"Huh?"

"I still love you." And she could see the corners of his mouth turn up in the beginnings of a quirky smile.

She rolled her eyes, but she smiled. She knew he was trying to address her fear of 'will things be the same when we get home' by telling her that they were now home-sort of-and he still loved her. "You're a goof."

"But you love me anyway."

"I do." She squeezed his hand back.

His eyes flickered and then the grin on his face got a bit more smug. "Glad to see you're practicing."

She could tell by the look on his face that there was something hidden in his words. Being as in snyc, mentally, as they were, it didn't take her long to think back to the most recent words that she'd just spoken and realize what they sounded like: something like what couples say to each other involving that eight-letter word starting with 'M' that shall not be spoken aloud. She felt her stomach drop just like she'd gone upside down on a carnival ride. And she'd walked right into that one.

"God, Castle!" She unbuckled her seatbelt and pushed herself out of the seat, even though they were still moving. "What happened to your promise of 'no pressure', huh?"

He could see that her tension level had increased in the last few seconds, and he immediately regretted his little quip. He unbuckled his seatbelt too, and walked up behind her, putting one hand on her shoulder and laying his chin on her opposite shoulder. "I'm sorry. When I heard the words come out of your mouth, I just couldn't resist. But I am sorry. I truly never meant to pressure you. Bad timing."

"Very bad timing," she agreed. "It was a nice moment, and you had to go and spoil it like that."

"I hope your reference to being spoiled only has to do with bad timing and not to the whole subject of committment, with me. But anyway, how about a do-over on the conversation?" He took a breath. "But you love me anyway," he repeated, but more slowly and deliberately than he had before, obviously prompting her for a different response than last time, for their do-over.

He could feel her rolling her eyes again. Then she said in a very dramatic tone, "Why, you're correct, Mr. Castle! I love you anyway." Then, under her breath, she muttered, "although this is one of those times I think I should be committed for it."

He stepped quickly around her so he was facing her. "Hey! That was _so_ not nice!"

"But you love me anyway," she parroted to him, grinning mischievously.

"Yes, I do." She raised her eyebrow at him, silently commenting on his familiar choice of words. He matched her grin and said, "See? I have no problem saying the words."

"Well, perhaps if you were as...discerning...as I am, you wouldn't also have two divorces behind you too."

"Ouch. But you might just be right about that. Suffice it to say that I've learned my lesson well, and I will never again make that mistake." Then as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized they didn't sound right. "Uhhhh," he tried to correct, "that didn't come out right. I meant a divorce. I'm never getting divorced again. And we're not a mistake. We wouldn't get divorced. That is, when we get married. Oh...I shouldn't have said that! I mean, I'm not trying to pressure you anymore. But you should know that-"

He was silenced by a soft hand over his mouth. "Castle, you're rambling. I know what you mean. And I'm good now. But just stop the innuendo about the damn ring, at least for the next couple of days, will you? We certainly don't need that slipping out while we're trying to maintain our ruse, do we?" He nodded with his hand still over her mouth, and gave her the a-ok sign with his right hand. "Good." And she removed her hand and gave him a quick little peck on the lips.

Right after that, the plane lurched to a stop and she took a little step backwards and grabbed onto the side of the plane to steady herself again, while Rick grabbed the chair next to him.

"I guess we're here," he said, in a somewhat somber voice, as though he was amazed that they were actually back in New York now. "I guess we should-"

"Oh, my God!" Kate shrieked as she looked out the window of the plane, in a voice that held more than a hint of panic to it. It wasn't a tone that Rick was used to hearing coming out of Kate Beckett's mouth _at all_. Worried, he quickly took the couple of steps over to her. She stepped aside. "Look! Oh, my God, what are we going to do?"

Not understanding what had her so suddenly stressed, Rick bent his head and looked out the window. And very promptly, the air left his lungs and he started coughing. Because there, casually leaning against Beckett's police cruiser were none other than Kevin Ryan, Javier Esposito and Lanie Parrish, arms crossed, looking toward the plane and talking among themselves, obviously waiting to meet the passengers on this flight.

Both Kate and Rick shrank back out of the way of the windows. And then, as if in perfect harmony and having the same thoughts, their heads both turned in unison to look toward the door to the bedroom, where they knew the satin sheets on the bed were still rumpled from their initiation into the five hundred foot club and the mile high club. It would be obvious to anyone what had happened during the plane ride, and with whom. And then also in unison, they turned to look at each other again, their jaws slack with shock. It didn't matter who spoke first, because they shared the same thoughts."

"What the hell?"

"Why are they here?"

"When they see that-"

_"My God, we are SO busted."_

* * *

_**Well, there it is. With the length of this chapter, now you can see why I had to split up 57 and 58 into two different chapters. **_

_**I hope everyone enjoyed it. The smut scene was, once again, one of the more difficult ones for me to write. I think I've now exhausted a lot of my smut-writing capability for a while. But they got their initiation into the mile-high club, so that should make a lot of you happy (and I could not believe how many people have mentioned that over the course of the last twenty chapters or so. I guess you're all just closet 'sex on a plane' freaks or something!)**_

_**I actually kind of liked how this chapter turned out. But I probably shouldn't admit it, though, because whenever I say I'm not sure about a chapter, you guys say the absolute nicest things! **_

_**So what was your favorite part? Smut, banter about marriage, the surprise ending? (at least I hope it was a surprise.)**_

_**Review? Please? That motivation thing is still an issue, and really gives me that warm fuzzy when I read all of your reviews. Some of you have been truly awesome in leaving notes for me, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of them. So THANK YOU!**_


	59. Chapter 59

_**Wow...so many wonderful reviews for the last chapter! Some people have said that there's an awful lot of smut in this story. I know! I hope it didn't end up turning people off. Truly not my intention...people just seemed to really like their smut, and if I wouldn't have some for a while, it seemed people would be asking for more! I know I did seem to lose some readers after chapter 24, so I always wondered if it was because of the M rating that I had to give the story at that point. At the beginning of this story, I never would have dreamed that a) I would be able to write smut at all, or b) the story would end up having this much, and in quite a few different chapters. Funny how things change.**_

_**And lately, I seem to have acquired some brave, new readers who decided to tackle this monster of a story. I'll probably miss some, but I just want to say a big welcome and thanks to Wendi, Tracks of Destiny, Gilasays, Sammichbatch, msread, LadyLaura11, littletwinkle and anyone else who's new. And I have to ask, where are you finding it? Just on the ff site, or is the story making the rounds of the personal blogs again? And I also have to say a big thanks to eesperas, who is slowly catching up, and is leaving me many nice reviews along the journey. I know it's something to make it through the whole fic, but when it's not even in your native language...wow!**_

_**And Emma...brilliance personified? Wow! Thanks! I was LOLing (if that makes sense). I just love coming up with a good synonym for something.**_

_**One more thing: I thought it was so cool that so many of you liked the little bit about her ripping off his shirt. I totally didn't expect that, but I'm glad it was such a hit. **_

_**Disclaimer: The usual. **_

_**Now, I'm done. Go read. Hope you like it!**_

* * *

They stood, staring at each other, mouths agape. "Good God, Rick, what are _they_ doing here? How did they even know when we'd be landing? You didn't call them, did you?"

"No! I...they...no!" he stammered. "You don't think they're going to want to come on the plane, do you?"

She rolled her eyes. "Will they want to come on the plane?" Her voice asked the question in an exaperated tone, which changed to sarcastic with her next words. "Oh, no, I'm sure they just want to stand there and wave at us, and then they're going to go merrily on their way after we wave back." She put her hand on her hip and glared at him. "Of COURSE they're going to expect to come on the plane! It's a freaking private plane, Castle! They're going to want to sit in the seats and explore, and the guys are probably going to want to check out the mini-bar too."

"And probably have a tour, including the..." he said in a low voice as he pointed surreptitiously toward the bedroom with the bed that was a very vivid advertisement of their achievements in the aviation coitus realm.

"Uh huh," she nodded.

Just then, he took a quick breath and his eyes got big. "Ted!" he exclaimed quickly, and then dashed off toward the front of the plane, leaving Kate wondering what was going on.

She just shrugged, and went over to the closet where they'd stowed the luggage and bags. She started getting the bags out and placed them over by the still-closed door to the plane. She'd gotten a few of them unloaded when Rick came back from the cockpit, grinning widely. "What's up with you?" she asked. "I thought afterglow was only for women."

"Ah, but you, too, will glow when you hear this. But do try to control yourself in case our three stalker stooges can see through the plane windows."

On reflex, she glanced toward the windows, where she caught sight of part of Esposito's arm, so she knew that yes, they could be seen, at least a little bit. But Rick still hadn't told her what he was grinning about. "Fine. I'll keep my hands and everything else to myself. But will you tell me how we're going to get out of this mess?"

"Well, it did occur to me to just make the bed. But they'd know anyway, know what I mean?" She nodded, realizing that the room would need a good airing out. "So we'll just use our on-board bouncer system. Ted."

"Ted? The pilot?"

"Yes, Ted, the pilot, who _used_ to be in the marines. You think you're scary? Well, you are, but Ted can be pretty scary too, when he wants to. Ex-marine and all of that. So nobody will be getting on this plane. Ted will make sure of that." He smiled at her smugly and rubbed his hands together, obviously enjoying the prospect of witnessing how the drama will unfold.

"Really? You think he can keep them out of here? And what about the bed, anyway?"

"First, yes, he can definitely keep them out, and second, there's a cleaning service that takes care of planes like this. Just like with the house in Florida too. They'll take care of the bed."

Just then, Ted stuck his head out of the cockpit. "Are you both ready? The plane is shut down for now and I can open the door anytime."

They both looked over at Ted and then she felt Rick touch her hand as he said, "Give us a couple of minutes, okay?"

"No problem," the pilot responded, disappearing back into the cockpit.

Rick motioned Kate toward the back of the plane, but stopped them when they were in the very short hallway, out of view of any of the windows. He gave her a small kiss, and then pulled her to him in an embrace. "I just wanted to do that once more before we see them. Because we probably won't have any time to ourselves until we get in the limo, but even then, knowing them, they'll probably follow us and we still can't sit closely or anything."

She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head on his replacement shirt. "I should have known that you'd order a limo."

"Of course." She could feel his grin, and she raised her head to see it again. "I guess this is it then, huh? Phase two of the punking plan begins?"

"Ready?"

"Hopefully. Let me take one more look at myself and make sure I don't look like I just had wild plane sex with you."

He gave her one more little peck on the lips and said "Love you." Then he let go of her to walk toward the front, while she went to the back to check her makeup. "Ditto," she called out after him, and he shot her a little wink as he looked back at her over his shoulder.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Lanie was not pleased. And if the truth be told, Ryan and Esposito also looked a bit surprised, and then slightly bummed out.

The plane doors had opened, and after exclaiming about the cold and pulling her jacket a little more closely around her, Kate had gone down the stairway first, plastering a big smile on her face as she greeted Lanie with a one-handed hug because she was carrying her new duffel bag in her other hand. After the hug, Lanie glanced at the bag and then did a double-take. "Damn, girl, that thing is _bright_! And it's not really your normal style."

"Well, _someone_ told Castle that most of my summery beach clothes were...oh, what was the word? Oh, yes, I believe the word was 'pathetic'. I think the word 'crap' might have even been spoken at some point. And that _someone_ told Castle that he had to buy me new clothes, and I'm sure that _someone_ could figure out what he'd do with that particular order. So anyway, this wonderful bag was purchased for the express purpose of hauling some of those unpathetic new clothes back home. So that _someone_ should probably just can the comments about my new luggage situation."

Lanie pursed her lips and glared at her friend before she broke into a smile and pulled her in for another hug. "Damn, but it's good to have you back!" But she broke away and started heading for the stairs, saying, "Now, let me get a look at that plane!"

But her attempts were thwarted by the tall man at the top of the stairs. Kate looked at him, and realized that Ted looked quite a bit more imposing now than he had earlier, standing at the top of the top of the stairs, increasing the illusion of his height, and having put on a battered leather aviator jacket and mirrored sunglasses. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he told Lanie, addressing her from a considerable height advantage. "You can't board the plane."

Lanie blinked up at the man. "No, I don't want to go anywhere, hon, I just want to look around. I dropped that suitcase off so quickly two weeks ago that I didn't get to see _anything_. And I just _have_ to check this bird out!" she said in her sugary sweet voice that she used when she was trying to convince someone to let her do something.

But Ted was not one to be taken in by a sweet voice. "Sorry, ma'am," Ted repeated politely. "Nobody is allowed on the plane except for me, Mr. Castle and Ms. Beckett."

Her mouth opened and it looked like she was going to say something, but then Castle appeared behind Ted. He looked down at Lanie. "Well, if it isn't the beautiful Dr. Parrish! What brings you to the airport today?" And he looked past her to see the guys, still leaning against the car casually, but watching everything with keen interest. "Hey, guys!" he said with a wave, which they returned, smirks on their faces.

He refocused his gaze on Lanie, who was now saying, "I just had to see if you were really and truly still alive after being alone with Kate for two weeks. Well, almost alone," she added, with a raised eyebrow directed toward Kate.

"Oh, yes. She was very well behaved. I just wish I could say the same about some of the wild animals down in that state. They don't like me very well." He shook his head and then remembered the bag he was carrying. He handed it over Ted's shoulder, down to Lanie. "This is another one of Beckett's bags with her new clothes. Can you set it down over there? Thanks." And after he handed it off to her, he disappeared back into the plane, leaving Lanie no choice but to go back down the couple of steps to the pavement so she could set the bag down. As she did, they noticed a limo stopping near where Beckett's police cruiser was parked.

Castle reappeared at the door to the plane with a couple of larger suitcases, one of which he handed down to Ted. Both men took them down the steps, and clandestinely kept an eye on the others, as their bodies effectively blocked the stairs.

Lanie, not one to be thwarted, tried again as she asked Castle, "So why can't we look around the plane, Castle? You got to fly on it...we just want to see it."

He shrugged casually. "Not sure exactly. But I know there are some pretty strict guidlines for that sort of thing. Wouldn't want to get Ted in trouble."

Ted piped in, "Ma'am, the private air charter company that I work for is very specific about that sort of thing. Absolutely no people can set foot on the plane unless they are listed on the contract for the flight. Liability issues, ma'am."

Lanie shot him a 'you've got to be kidding' look, and tried asking again, but to no avail. Ted was not budging, neither literally nor figuratively. Castle saw her eyes narrow and he knew she was annoyed, so he chose that moment to go get a few more of the bags. It also provided a good excuse to hide the smile that was itching to break out on his face at her annoyance over not being able to board the plane. Kate had wandered over to say hi to the guys, and Lanie was left standing there, staring at Ted, who just stared back at her with no expression on his face at all, although that alone was quite intimidating.

When the last of the bags were unloaded, Lanie decided to get some of her power back. "Castle, you go ahead and put your bags in Beckett's car. The guys can take you home. My girl and I are takin' that limo, and she's going to start telling me all about this trip. And I've decided that since I can't even _look_ at the plane," she justified, shooting a glare at Ted, "I might as well relax in comfort on the way back to her apartment." She turned to the guys. "You can drop Castle off, right? And then take Beckett's car back to the precinct. She can get it tomorrow."

"Sure, we can take Castle back. Maybe we could play some Madden at your place, huh, bro? You do have that huge TV."

Rick looked at Lanie, and then at the guys. "Uh...yeah?" Then he snapped back to reality. "No! Wait a minute! I ordered the limo; I should at least get a chance to ride in it!"

Lanie shook her head. "I think you'll survive, Castle. And you were just in a mansion on a beach for two weeks. You had enough luxury. Consider this part of my payment for helping you get her down there in the first place." And she stalked off toward the limo, muttering something about a wet bar.

Castle and Beckett sneaked a look at each other, and each read the surprise in the others face as they knew they'd have to go along with Lanie's suggestion or their protests would look too strange to everyone. They could see the mutuality at the moment they both realized that _this was it_...the vacation was done. They were going to be apart now, and they hadn't been apart in over two weeks, and not since they declared their feelings for each other. It wouldn't have seemed like a long time to the average person, but to them, it was almost a lifetime...the lifetime of their romantic relationship. They'd always been together, and they were now accustomed to that, and since things had moved seemingly at warp speed, that short amount of time felt like a lot longer. With the change in their relationship, they simply didn't know how to exist yet, apart from each other. They'd never really thought about it, even when they saw Lanie and the boys had met them, but now it hit them both that there would be no stolen kisses or touches in the limo, no stop at her apartment to drop things off, no last looks at the pictures on the camera, no last, sweet goodbye kisses before Rick went home to see his daughter.

_This was it, right here, right now. Goodbye. And they had an audience._

So Rick walked over to the newly found love of his life, and reluctantly stuck out his hand for a handshake. Kate looked at it with wide eyes before finally placing her hand in his. "Well, Detective, I guess this is goodbye for now. It's been great." His eyes, however, telegraphed something else: _this really stinks, _and _why is she taking my limo?_

Kate smiled at the very subtle pout she saw, knowing him so well now that she could pick up on it even if she didn't think the others would be able to. "Ditto, Castle." The word held more meaning because of what she'd just said to him in the plane before they opened the door, but only he knew that meaning, and it caused a smile of his own to form on his lips. "And thank you," she added softly, "for everything. You really do know how to kidnap a girl."

"Just one of my many talents." Then a stiff breeze blew at them just then, and it brought him back to reality and kept him from getting lost any further in her eyes, and most importantly, it kept him from leaning in toward her to demonstrate one of his many talents. He gave a look at the luggage and the bags on the ground, and gave Kate a knowing look before picking up one of the bags and walking casually over to the trunk of her cruiser to put it inside. Kate knew that it was the bag containing her camera, and she was glad for his foresight. The guys wouldn't care, but Kate knew that if Lanie happened to see the camera, she'd want to look at the pictures. And with all of the 'couple' shots they'd taken with the timer, Kate knew that would not be a good thing. At least until after tomorrow night.

Kate directed Ryan and Esposito to each grab a bag to haul over to the limo, while Rick loaded his own suitcase in the back. Kate remembered to get her gun out of her trunk and put the case into the limo. Before leaving, Esposito, who had been pretty quiet up until then, said, "Oh, hey Beckett? Where's the new guy? Uh...Dave? I thought for sure he'd fly back with you guys."

Kate, who was on her way to the limo, froze in her tracks at the mention of Dave. She turned slowly around toward Esposito and tried to adopt a casual tone when she answered him. "No, he already had a plane ticket. With his...family. He flew back yesterday." She was glad she was quick enough to perpetuate some of the 'family reunion' story that she'd already told. "But...you'll be there tomorrow night, right? Old Haunt? Dave's going to meet us there and then you can see for yourself that he's a great guy. Just keep the big brother attitude at home, okay?"

Ryan chuckled. "I'm there. Gotta hear how he liked my advice about what you guys should do. Uh, I mean the thing." When he got some looks from everyone, including Esposito saying 'dude' under his breath, Ryan continued, "You know, the public thing. The very non-private thing, because I wouldn't talk about a private thing. Uh, was it deep sea fishing? Um, yeah, okay. I think I'll go wait in the car now. Yeah, that's what I'll do.

Esposito looked back at Kate. "Man," he said, shaking his head. "Anyway, we'll be there. Come on, Castle, let's go," he told the author, motioning him toward the car. Rick looked over at Kate, helpless to do anything except follow. He bid her goodbye with a quick wave, which she reciprocated before she climbed into the limo beside Lanie.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Lanie kept shooting looks at Kate all the way home, but at least it was tempered by Lanie's interest in the mini-bar. She was obviously trying to figure out the new relationship dynamic between her friend and the author, because what she had suspected and hoped for for a few years obviously hadn't come to pass, and she was a little perplexed about that and really wanted to figure it out. Kate did some gushing about the trip, but worked to keep her comments very neutral, like about the seashells or the weather. She talked about the ice cream place, and just substituted Dave into what were really her experiences with Rick. And it wasn't a total lie, since after all, they both had been at the dessert shop together; she and Rick had even met the other couple there. Lanie on one hand seemed eager to hear any information about Dave, but eventually seemed bored when Kate went on with her stories. Kate deflected specific answers when Lanie point-blank asked about Castle, trying to make it seem like they weren't together night and day. She did reiterate to Lanie that Dave and Castle really got along well with each other, even relaying the story about them getting lost in the game outside the restaurant, although Joelle became one of Dave's 'cousins' in the story. And then she told her about Castle's birthday surprise for her, with the spa and then how he did his little celebrity impersonation on stage later that night. She figured she wouldn't even have to embellish very much on the story, because nothing romantic had happened between them at that point, and the story was pretty outrageous all on its own.

"He...okay, let me get this straight. Castle, in a blond wig, and...and..."

"Skinny jeans. No lie."

She fell back, laughing. "Oh, God girl, you must have been ready to shoot him."

"I was. But of course, I didn't have my gun."

"Please tell me you at least got a picture with your phone. Or video. Something?"

"Lanie, I was so shocked I don't think I even knew what a phone was at that point."

They arrived at Kate's apartment a short while later, and between the two of them, managed to get all of Kate's bags carried inside. Lanie knew what she had packed for Kate, and it wasn't anywhere near what they had carried inside, so she was anxious to get a look at the clothing that the millionnaire author had bought for the detective.

Kate opened her suitcase on her bed, and started taking out some of the clothing and emptied it straight back into her drawers. Not much needed to be washed, since they had had a washer and dryer at their disposal. Kate held up a few of the dresses for Lanie to see before she hung them in her closet, and Lanie looked at them enviously. "At this moment, I am so wishing we were the same size so in the summer I could come over and raid your closet. This stuff is amazing!"

Kate laughed. "Hey, feel free to take a look at some of the other stuff. You can hang it up and then I won't have to do it! Ha! I'm going to go get some ice water. Want a glass?" she asked her friend.

"Sure. Thanks," Lanie replied, turning toward the suitcase.

Kate left to go into the kitchen and filled two glasses with water. She was absentmindedly adding ice to the glasses when she heard a high-pitched scream coming from the bedroom. It was so ear-splitting that she bet that dogs within a five block radius were starting to howl. Forgetting the ice water, she ran back into the bedroom. And stopped short.

What she saw when she entered the bedroom made her stomach figuratively drop to her knees.

Lanie Parrish was sitting there, on Kate's bed, with one hand to her chest, breathing heavily, with the other hand holding a small jeweler's box.

And the small jeweler's box was opened, and Lanie was at this moment staring at the drop-dead gorgeous engagement ring that Kate had received three days earlier.

"Is this what I think it is?" Lanie asked her incredulously.

* * *

_**Well, gang, that's it for now. I'm not sure if I really am happy with how the chapter unfolded. I'm wondering if it was too...blah. I hope not.**_

_**I hope you enjoyed seeing how they got out (sort of) of their little predicament. Originally, this wasn't even part of my intent for this story. But then I got the idea to have Lanie and the boys meet the plane (and I may address the whys and wherefores of that a little later), and then it seemed only natural that she would go through Beckett's suitcase as she admired the new clothes. And of course she would just have to find what was supposed to be hidden. Right?**_

_**And that promo for 3x22? Wowsers! Can't wait! And yes, atheart101, I definitely think she should have been wearing a red bikini!**_

_**And now I have to get some sleep, b/c it's already waaaaaayyyy too late, and I have to be up early to enjoy spring break with my kids tomorrow...uh, today. (Although we're supposed to get 3-6 inches of snow. In April. That's...unAmerican or something. Maybe it's a sign that I should be writing more chapters of 'Blizzard' ;-) )**_

_**So...thoughts? **_


	60. Chapter 60

_**Okay, um, yeah. Wow. I got an incredible amount of reviews for the last chapter, the vast majority of them extremely positive. I almost can't believe all of the wonderful things you all said! THANKS SO MUCH! I am just seriously amazed-and so grateful-that you all love this story so much!**_

_**And next...Chapter 60? Really? I can't believe I'm on Chapter 60 of this thing! And that there are so many people who actually have the fortitude to tackle this! 60...wow.**_

_**I'm glad you liked (or hated, in some cases-LOL) my little surprise cliffhanger. I hope this next chapter will be a surprise for you; it ended up being a surprise for me as I was writing it (maybe I shouldn't admit that though...but I love happy accidents). There's more explanation about that in the author's note below. I figure that you'll either love it or hate it, and obviously, I hope it's the former. **_

_**Many thanks to NCISchick, who, over the last several days, has read this story from start to finish, and has left many wonderful reviews for me along the journey. Congratulations on getting caught up! Congrats also to eesperas and JolieChae13, who are now also caught up and left absolutely wonderful comments for me. Thank you!**_

_**And although I'm sure I'm going to miss some people, I just want to thank several people for their very complimentary and sometimes hilarious comments for chapter 59: MTAM, AllIsFairInLoveAndWar, Michelle (DD), xLisaa, Samvalasam, atheart101, Beckett NYPD, LocoGreggo, haz3335, foreverhopefuloflove, LadyLaura11, , Kristen, LadyCreole19, Tempe4Booth, VACastleFan, VampLuvr, Mandy, Stanatic, Valerie Morse, MaerinB, Steve1961, emzeecastle, castlelover100. It seems that some people are jumping up and down, squeeling, yelling, shouting at their computers, or possibly even coming close to wetting themselves when they see an update or read a new chapter. It's crazy to think it evokes this kind of a response in people, but I LOVE it!**_

_**The usual disclaimer applies.**_

_**So, friends, read on...**_

* * *

_Previously:_

_Lanie Parrish was sitting there, on Kate's bed, with one hand to her chest, breathing heavily, with the other hand holding a small jeweler's box. _

_And the small jeweler's box was opened, and Lanie was at this moment staring at the drop-dead gorgeous engagement ring that Kate had received three days earlier. _

_"Is this what I think it is?" Lanie asked her incredulously._

'Oh, my goodness,' Kate thought. _Lanie was holding Rick's ring. The engagement ring that he had given her. _Kate knew she was busted...Lanie knew. Lanie was, at this moment, holding that ring. But what could she say...how could she explain everything? There was so much to explain! She and Rick had always intended to do this together, at the Old Haunt tomorrow night. Well, not about the ring, but about the rest of it. To do this now, when she was put on the spot...well, she just didn't even know where to begin. And now, she had even MORE to tell, with that ring sitting there staring at both of them. Kate knew that, face-to-face with her friend, she just couldn't maintain the ruse any longer. And really, how could she anyway? Her mind worked pretty fast when she'd had to cover or improvise before, but Rick had always been there with her. Now, it seemed that he was her strength, like she drew on his imagination for inspiration for her own. Without him there, her mind was a blank. There was just nothing left to do now; she would just have to come clean. She could almost hear Rick's voice in her ear whispering 'This is going to be _awk-ward_...'

"Lanie..." Kate began, once she was able to actually form words again. What in the world was she going to say? But when Kate hesitated, Lanie apparently couldn't stand the silence and tried to fill it up herself by asking another question.

"He _proposed_ to you? You have _definitely_ been holding out on me! You have some serious explaining to do, girl! How long did you think you could keep this from me? Huh?" As she said the words, Kate could almost see the exclamation points floating above her friend's head.

"Lanie..." Kate began again.

"I just never...I _totally_ never expected this." Her friend still looked a little dumbstruck. "Well, what did you say? Did you say yes? But wait, if you said yes, then why do you have this ring in your suitcase?"

"Lanie..."

"Girl, will you stop telling me my name and answer the damn question before I smack you?"

"Which one?" Kate asked, some sarcasm showing through because her friend just kept firing questions at her. "You're well on your way to playing a fantastic game of twenty questions."

Lanie paused a moment, realizing she hadn't gotten an answer to anything. "Any of them. All of them! Hell, just start with how. It's not every day that you get proposed to, especially when a ring like _this_ is involved! I'll say one thing for him...that man has great taste! But I want details. What did he say?"

Kate smiled a bit, thinking back to that night. "He'd given me a pair of earrings, and we'd had the whole discussion about them being too expensive, I didn't need them...all of that. And then later, we're sitting around and he gives me another box. That one," she said, gesturing to the box that Lanie was still holding. "So of course I think it's another pair of earrings, because anything else would be ridiculous at this point in our relationship, right? And then I open it, and I found that it was definitely _not_ another pair of earrings."

"Obviously," Lanie told her, nodding.

"Obviously. So I started to freak out because it's just too soon, you know? We haven't even been together that long." Lanie nodded in understanding, because she totally felt the same. "And then he tells me that he wanted to get this out there and wants me to know how he feels, and I can take however long I need to decide. He wanted to make his intentions clear to me, to let me know he's totally serious and committed and all that. It was the sweetest thing. Well, now that I can look back on it, I can say it was the sweetest thing. But right then I was still freaking out over the whole thing and I was still in such a state of shock. I thought I might throw up. I mean, this is the type of thing that just about every girl dreams about at some point, and I never saw it coming! And you know...he didn't even want an answer then! He was totally fine with it; said that he knew I needed more time and that was fine.. And then he said that I can just start wearing the ring whenever I'm ready, and then he'll know."

"Pretty confident of what your answer will be, huh?" Lanie said, her eyebrow raised.

"You know it." Kate smiled again, and shook her head, as if remembering. Then she looked up at Lanie and caught the look on her friend's face. "What?"

Lanie looked at her, really looked at her. And finally, she gave a little shake to her head and said, "You're happy. You are just _really_ happy. I can tell. It's...I haven't seen you like this in such a long time. Maybe never. You're just...lighter or something."

Kate looked down, a little embarrassed. "I _am_ happy." And as she said the words, she realized that it was true. "I never thought I would be, or that I could be, but I am. I'm glad that I took the chance on him."

Lanie's expression softened, and she reached over to give her friend a hug. "And I'm happy for you, sweetie. You deserve this. And I'm still not totally on board with you jumping into a whole engagement thing after such a short time, but as long as he keeps making you this happy, I'll be right behind you."

Lanie's words shocked Kate, and she realized again how much her friend cared about her. She could be pushy, and blunt, and she could give you a verbal smackdown like no other, but she was a great friend. Kate pulled back, and she now looked at Lanie through teary eyes. "Thank you. Really. You don't know how much that means to me. But remember, I'm not officially engaged. I haven't put the ring on."

But then Lanie, who now had tears in her own eyes, told her a little more sternly, "But you will, and from the looks of you, it looks like that time won't be too far off."

"Lanie!" Kate said, shocked by her assumption and further by the fact that her friend was making the declaration, aloud, and wasn't nearly as upset as Kate figured she'd be. Next thing she knew, Lanie and Rick would probably get together and start humming the wedding march under their breath whenever she was near until she caved and started wearing the ring. Then she'd have to take a lesson out of Lanie's book and she'd have to smack both of them.

"But hey," Lanie continued, "you tell that man of yours that if he ever hurts you, if he ever makes you any less happy than you are right now, he'll have to answer to me. And I'll kick his butt myself before I turn him over to Jav...Esposito. And Ryan."

Lanie's little slip didn't go unnoticed by Kate, despite the fact that Lanie had pulled her into another hug. So when the hug was done, Kate asked casually, "So what's been happening with you for the last couple of weeks? Aside from the 300 pound guy. And Chip."

"Chip?"

"Woodchipper guy. Esposito called and told me about him. Said that you were sorting through the...uh...pieces."

"Ah, Chip. Old Chip was quite the man. His real name was Melvin Sundmeier, although personally, I think the name Chip makes him sound like much more of a honey than he really was. But it's too much to go into now. You're still on vacation, right? Believe me, you do NOT want to hear any more about Chip before you have to."

"So how about we talk about something else then. How's Esposito?" Kate aimed for a casual tone, but she wasn't going to beat around the bush. All of her own secrets were out now, so it was time for Lanie to spill too. And she was certain that there was at least _something_ to spill, because the good doctor's eyes suddenly got just a bit wider before she looked sideways up at the ceiling.

"Esposito? He's fine. Or I guess he'd be fine. You just saw him at the airport...did he look fine to you?"

"Oh, he looked fine. So tell me, Lanie, exactly how 'fine' is our Esposito? Or maybe I shouldn't call him 'our' Esposito. That doesn't make you mad, does it?" she asked cheekily, obviously trying to elicit a certain type of answer from her friend.

Lanie narrowed her eyes at Kate. "Girl, just what the _hell_ are you getting at?"

Kate smiled. "Lanie, Lanie, Lanie. You really give me no credit. So how serious are the both of you?"

Lanie tried to kee her breathing even, but even Kate could see her quick intake of breath as soon as she mentioned the word 'serious.'

"Me and...and...Esposito?" She tried a fake little laugh that fell flat. "Exactly how much sun did you get down there? I think you still have might have a case of heat stroke or something."

"Lanie, while heat stroke may cause hallucinations, the weather here is anything but heat stroke inducing."

"Well, what have you been smoking then?"

"Lanie, as you were so fond of telling me, even as little as ten minutes ago, spill. I want details. You gave me enough crap in Florida about the whole Dave thing, so now it's your turn to spill."

"Girl, I just gotta say-" her statement was cut off by the ringing of her cell phone. She looked at the caller ID and got an almost giddy smile on her face as she answered it. "Parrish. Yeah? Ugh. Okay, give me the address." She grabbed a notepad from Kate's bedside table and jotted down the information. "Thirty minutes sound okay? Yup, no problem."

"Body?" Kate asked when Lanie had put her phone away.

"Uh huh. Perlmutter is apparently upchucking fast and furiously, so I'm the backup. So I'd love to stay and chat, but I really have to go see some men about a body."

"Oh, I'm sure you'd just _love_ to stay and continue our Esposito conversation," she said sarcastically, which earned her a scary glare from the doctor. "And for all of the third degrees that you've given me, including making me dish about a certain ring-and give me that back!" Kate said as she grabbed the velvet box that Lanie was still holding, "-you'd just better be prepared to give _me_ a little information the next time I see you. Scratch that-you'd better be prepared to give me a LOT of information."

"I don't know what I could possibly tell you," Lanie said innocently as she got up, but Kate just raised an eyebrow at her. Lanie ignored her and kept walking toward the door of the apartment, grabbing her purse on the way, covering the distance a bit more briskly than normal, if Kate wasn't mistaken, like she couldn't wait to get away now that the topic of conversation had focused on her. "But back to our original hot topic, I really am happy for you, honey. You deserve it. But do me a favor, huh? Be sure to give me some warning before you decide to show up one day wearing that rock, because otherwise I just may wet myself."

Kate laughed and promised she would. "And it'll really be nice because all of the side bets that people have going about if Rick and I would get together will finally be a moot point."

Lanie's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, it's _'Rick' _now, is it?"

Kate realized with a start that this was probably about the only time that her friend had ever heard her call the man by his first name. "Well, sometimes. It was really just to keep a little more anonymity down there. I think it was...oh, we rented bikes and rode around the island on my birthday. He said that if called him 'Rick', it would attract a lot less attention than if I called him 'Castle' all the time. He said 'Rick' is just some guy, but 'Castle' might cause people to take a second look and then our cover would be blown when people recognized him. It made sense. So after that, I just got used to it, I guess. Well, unless he annoys me too much, then it's still 'Castle'."

Lanie nodded. It did make sense. But she had a body to get to, and she couldn't keep getting sidetracked or Kate just might end up returning to the topic of that whole Esposito thing again. She was not ready to get into that! So she put her hand on the doorknob and opened the door, stepping out into the hall.

Kate told her, "Thanks again, Lanie. It means a lot that you're okay with me not telling you about everything right away. It just kind of got...big...really fast. And that you're not freaking out about this whole thing, because sometimes I think I'm freaking out enough for ten people."

Lanie looked at Kate. She just stood there, shaking her head and smiling at her friend. "You're happy. I can see that, underneath all the various levels of freak. And that's really all that matters." Before she left, she leaned forward and gave Kate another big hug. "And I can see now where you just needed some time to run through it all in your own head first. I know I was skeptical at first, but I was just worried it was too fast. But for him to give you a ring like that...I have to say, this Dave must be really special, and like I said, the man has great taste! I cannot _wait_ to meet him tomorrow! Bye, sweetie!" And she was gone.

Kate was shocked-stunned-for the umpteenth time that day, and she did a double-take at Lanie's retreating back. Her jaw dropped down to the ground as her friend hurried down the short hallway and out of sight as she rushed down the stairs. When Kate finally found her voice, it came out as a squeak as she said "Dave?" to the now-empty hallway. She raised her hand, almost as if to call Lanie back, and then she walked over to the stairs. "Lanie?" she said, but her friend was gone.

She went back into her apartment and locked the door. She colllapsed on the couch with what must have been a dumbstruck look on her face. What had just happened? Lanie thought that she was pre-engaged to...Dave? _Dave?_ What the hell? She'd just _told_ her all about Rick, and the proposal, and how she felt, and...everything. Freaking _everything!_ She'd totally come clean! She hadn't lied, embellished, or even stretched the truth at all, not one little bit. She was more honest than she normally was with Lanie, because she knew Lanie liked to push. So many other times, Lanie had had to poke and push and pry. But not now...now, Kate had been completely honest about everything. Everything! So why did Lanie apparently think she was engaged to Dave? Or rather, involved with Dave?

She thought back to their conversation. Lanie had asked a bunch of questions, and she almost couldn't get a word in right at first. But when she did...what did she say? She tried to remember, but it was kind of a jumble because she was still reeling, somewhat, from the idea of having someone else see that ring. The first thing...Lanie had asked her about the proposal. And Kate had told her exactly what had happened, even about the earrings. She left out the part about the bikini, but the whole bikini thing with Rick was just a bit too...hot to share, even with her best friend. But she did tell her the Cliff Notes version of what he'd said during the proposal, and she'd even said how they hadn't been together that long so he knew she'd be unsure about accepting right away.

And as she was thinking, was recalling the conversation as well as she could, she realized that she hadn't ever called Rick by name. She hadn't needed to. Or she thought she hadn't needed to. She'd just thought-assumed-that when Lanie saw the ring, she would have known it was from Rick. Hell, during practically every conversation, Lanie was always talking about Kate and Rick getting together, even after they'd introduced Dave into the equation. But, then again, Lanie had never called Dave by name until the end of the conversation, right before she walked away. And then Kate had realized the huge misunderstanding that was bearing down on them now.

She'd tried to tell the truth-granted, because she got caught, but she'd still tried-and Lanie _still_ believed the punk! Rick would get such a kick out of that.

So what was she going to do now? As soon as she posed the question to herself in her mind, she knew the answer. She would have to clear it up. It wasn't intentional, but somehow Lanie was still believing that she was engaged to Dave, not Rick. But wait...she wasn't engaged to Rick either! Oh, she really had to stop thinking like this! She looked at the ring that she realized was still in the box in her hand. She smiled. It really was gorgeous. She took a deep breath and gently pulled it out of the velvet slot that it was resting in, and held it between her thumb and forefinger, admiring it. She held it up to the light and watched as the artificial light of the room reflected off the many facets of the diamonds, causing the ring to almost glow. Remembering when she tried to read Heat Wave in the bathroom and Rick had caught her, she quickly looked around her apartment, as if to check to see if anyone was watching her, even though she logically knew nobody else was there. And she slipped the ring onto her left ring finger, only mildly surprised when it fit perfectly.

After one more glance around the room to make sure that there was still nobody lurking behind her, she held her arm straight out in front of her and wiggled her hand, watching as the diamonds sparkled back at her. All of a sudden, she had the strangest-and best-feeling of contentment and happiness wash over her as she felt a giggle bubble up inside of her and escape into the silence of the room. But then after she had gawked at the ring for a few minutes, she realized what she was doing. She was wearing the ring! She couldn't wear the ring! She quickly snatched her hand back and pulled it off of her finger with her other hand, and shoved it back into its slot in the velvet box. She couldn't be wearing the ring! She wasn't ready to be engaged! What was she thinking, fawning over the ring like that?

After shaking her head to get her mind back in order, she called Lanie. Of course, the call went straight to her voicemail; she was probably at the crime scene. She left her a quick message: "Hi Lanie, it's Kate. Our talk this afternoon was cut a little bit too short. So call me as soon as you get this. We _really_ need to talk. Bye." She needed to clear up this case of mistaken identity before things went any further.

Then she texted Rick. She knew he was probably still playing Madden with the guys, or was catching up with Alexis, so she didn't want to call him and disturb him. She thought about what to say and how to explain it, but finally just settled on asking him to call her. "VERY interesting developments with Lanie. Call me when you can. Love, K."

Her third item was to call her favorite Chinese take-out place and order some food, since she didn't even want to look in her refrigerator after being gone for two weeks. And as she sat down to wait for her food, her eyes were once again drawn to the ring that was sitting in the velvet case on her end table.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Two hours after it was left for her, Lanie was listening to Kate's message asking her to call her because they needed to talk. After she heard the message, she rolled her eyes heavenward. Yeah, right. She knew Kate was just going to grill her about Javier and what was going on. If that girl thought she was going to give Lanie the third degree, she had another thing coming. She'd be cooling those enormous heels for a long time if she thought that Lanie was just going to walk right into a Kate Beckett-style interrogation of her love life. No, Ms. Beckett would be waiting quite a while for that call back. Lanie got the impression that her workload was about to become very busy...well, at least as far as Kate was concerned.

* * *

_**I read this book a long time ago and I won't get into the specific plot points, but one of the points that was made was that when we talk about people that are very familiar to us, we generally don't say names; we might use nicknames, but we generally use pronouns. So I remembered this story when I was writing this chapter, because it is a valid point: you rarely use proper terms or even full names when you're familiar with someone or are talking about that familiar person with someone else. You use pronouns. So when Kate started explaining everything, she never mentioned Castle by name, because she was befuddled by Lanie finding the ring and was really fixated on that, and she just assumed that she'd been outed and that Lanie knew she was talking about Castle. She thought it was a done deal that Lanie knew the truth about her and Castle. Her mind was all on Castle, and not on Dave at all. So during their conversation, Kate was talking about Castle, but Lanie thought she meant Dave, because that's what she was led to believe initially. And they just both never actually said a name, so I hope the confusion sounded realistic enough. And even the couple of times when they did say names, it was in a context where it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. And Lanie could see first-hand how happy Kate was, so even if she didn't approve of the basic idea of a new guy and might still want her with Castle, she was willing to shut up about it once she saw that her friend was happy with the (supposed) new guy. So that's why I tempered the OTT reactions a bit when they were face to face. And really, hasn't everyone, at one time or another, had a conversation with someone about someone or something else, and eventually you find out you're not talking about the sat all?**_

_**Honestly, I hadn't meant to do it this way originally. Kate was going to try to keep up the ruse about Dave, and then was just going to refuse to talk about it for a few days, and by then, the secret would be out. But then I got this idea in my head, and I liked it better. I hope you guys did too. And I think it works a lot better in the grand scheme of things, and I think it'll be a little better, story-wise, as Kate tries to contact Lanie to set the record straight but Lanie keeps trying to avoid her.**_

_**So...long author's notes this time. But anyway, what do you think? Let me know...**_


	61. Chapter 61

_**You guys are sharp! I was thinking that some of you would get it about the misunderstanding about who Kate was talking about vs. who Lanie was talking about, but I didn't think quite so many people would be clued into it. I guess either you guys are either really smart or I'm not as good as I thought I was. :-(**_

_**Thanks to a new story follower, CastleAddiction, for saying that she liked the little recap I did at the beginning of the last chapter. After reading that, I started thinking that if a story that I'm following hasn't been updated in several days, I find that I tend to flip back to the previous chapter to see where I left off. I've done the recaps before, but never regularly, but I'll try to do them more now. **_

_**Christoph, glad to hear from you, although I had to find that translation site again. I really am amazed that you could read this whole thing, and it isn't even your native language! Congratulations and thank you for reading!**_

_**To all of you who are forgoing sleep to read my story: I'll just say thank you! I won't pretend that it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy to hear that you can't put it down long enough to SLEEP, but on some level, I do regret if it makes life difficult for you when you have to get by on no or little sleep because my story kept you up. But that must mean you're all enjoying it, so I'm happy for that.**_

_**So anyway, here's Chapter 61 (standard disclaimers apply):**_

* * *

_Previously:_

_Kate is trying to contact Lanie to let her know that she misunderstood about Dave being the one who gave her the ring, but Lanie got the message and has no intention of talking to Kate, because Lanie thinks that Kate is going to grill her about her relationship with Esposito. Meanwhile, Kate has also texted Rick to have him call her so she can tell him about Lanie finding the ring, and about the misunderstanding that ensued after that._

Rick was still reeling a little bit on the drive back to the loft from _not_ riding in the limo that he had ordered, and mostly from _not_ riding in said limo with Kate. He'd originally planned that they'd take a leisurely ride back to her apartment, past Battery Park to have a look at Lady Liberty, sipping a drink and cuddling in the back seat. He smiled at the thought.

And then the three stooges had shown up outside the plane, shooting his plans all to hell, with one of them appropriating not only his intended cuddling partner, but also his limo. And now he was stuck riding back to his loft in the back of Beckett's police car, staring at the back of Esposito's and Ryan's heads. He pulled out his phone without really thinking about it, intending to hit the speed dial for Kate and do a little verbal pouting, until he realized that he'd barely been apart from her for twenty minutes, and he didn't want to look desperate. Besides, she was with Lanie, and if he didn't want to send Lanie's tongue flapping, he knew he'd just have to wait a while.

The guys were apparently _not_ feeling like masters of conversation today. They'd asked him about the private plane, and about the weather down in Florida. He couldn't say too much about the private plane without thinking about what had happened on the plane earlier, so he just said it was a smooth flight. He couldn't say much about the weather without remembering a sun-kissed Kate on the beach in one of those swimming suits, or elements of eye torture as he first thought of them. And then his thoughts drifted to the one time the weather was not good, when they'd sat in the hot tub during the storm and had...done more than just sit in the hot tub. So he just sat in the back of the car and said that the weather was nice, and it was warm.

Luckily, by then they were at his loft, so they each grabbed a bag and helped him carry them in. He knew Alexis wouldn't be home yet; she was going to see a play for school and wouldn't be back until around dinnertime. And frankly, he didn't think he'd be back home quite this soon either. So after the door had shut, when they were face to face, Esposito started first. "Castle, dude, you were away with Beckett for over two weeks. She hooks up with some guy with great teeth, you get caught by an alligator, and she sits on your lap. And all you can say is that the plane ride was smooth and the weather was nice. We _know_ there's more to the story than that. Two weeks, man! We need a story."

He threw up his hands. "Guys, what do you want me to say? I, um...we did a lot of shelling."

Ryan's brows knitted together. "Shelling? Is that some new way to say..."

"No! Geez, Ryan! She's with Dave, _remember?_ No, shelling is...finding seashells. Real seashells. Sanibel and Captiva are famous for all of the shells that wash up on the beach. In some places you can't even walk on any sand...it's just pieces of shells. That was how Kate cut her foot one time."

"Oh, it's 'Kate' now, is it?"

"Yeeeesssss..." Rick said sarcastically. "It _is_ her name, after all."

"But you never call her that."

"Well, when we were out in public, I told her to call me 'Rick' because it would draw less attention then calling me 'Castle'. We were trying to stay off the radar, you know? So it was natural that I'd call her by her first name too."

Ryan shrugged. "But what about _'Kate'_ hurting her foot? Man, it sounds weird to call her that." He looked at Esposito, who nodded, and then they both looked expectantly at Castle.

"She went running one morning on the beach," he started explaining. As he told them the story, he walked into the kitchen to the refrigerator to see if there was anything to drink. He found some soda and handed one to each of the guys.

When there was a pause in the conversation, Rick knew what was coming next. "So Castle, what about Dave?"

"What about him?" he asked as nonchalantly as he could.

"Castle, come on. Give us the lowdown on this guy," Ryan urged.

Rick looked at Esposito. "Didn't we have this conversation already?"

Esposito shrugged. "Yeah, I told him. But it was a couple of days ago. Maybe she dumped him by now or something."

"Earth to Espo? Weren't you standing there when she just, not even one hour ago, mentioned meeting Dave at the Old Haunt tomorrow night?"

"Well..." Esposito said.

Ryan interrupted. "Look Castle. I'm gonna be straight. Man, you're like one of us or something. I mean, you're not a cop, and you're some rich dude, but you fit in with us now. It's just gonna be weird introducing someone else into the mix, and you're the only one who's met the guy! And this is pretty quick for Beckett, you have to admit. So we're just wondering about the guy, and you're the only one we can ask. Just think of it as us doing a little recon before tomorrow night."

Rick took a breath. "Guys, really, don't worry about Dave. When all is said and done, you'll like him." When all is said and done, you may just like him better than me for a while, he thought. He leaned forward and said in a low voice. "Remember, he got me the new version of Universal Domination..."

There was a look in Esposito's eyes as he held out his hand, remembering the pre-release version of the game for the first time. "Castle, you've been holding out on me. Give me your phone. Now."

Rick unlocked the phone and started the game, then put the phone into Esposito's waiting hands. Esposito sunk down onto the plush couch, and Ryan sat next to him, leaning over his shoulder and watching until, between levels, Espo looked over at him and said "Bro, it's creepy to have a dude breathing in my ear. Back off." Ryan looked sheepish and backed up a bit, but kept his eyes trained on the game. Rick smiled at the two of them and went into the kitchen, where he rummaged around a bit and found some snacks and brought them out by the guys.

Ryan was playing it by then, and from the look on Esposito's face, he seemed to be faring better than Esposito had. "Oh, got you, you son of a...oh, look, I made it glow!" Ryan exclaimed as he played the game.

"I suppose I'm never going to get my phone back now?" Rick asked the pair.

"Nope," and "Uh uh," they replied in unison.

They passed the phone between them for a while longer, alternately munching on the snacks that Rick had found in the kitchen. Rick sat and watched them, trying to figure out how he could incorporate a Roach scene like that into his next Nikki Heat book. He didn't like the books to be too Heat/Rook heavy; even though the premise of the books was based on them, he knew the supporting characters played a big role and that the books wouldn't be nearly as good without personal glimpses of them too.

All of a sudden, a familiar chime came out of Rick's phone, and the guys looked momentarily stunned as they were transported from a world of glowing demonic asteroids to see a picture of a smiling Alexis on Castle's phone. Ryan handed the phone back to Castle, muttering, "she's a good kid, but she has the worst timing."

Rick walked into the kitchen to take the call. "Hey, pumpkin!"

"Dad! Where are you? I didn't know if I'd even get you or if you'd still be flying yet."

"Nope, we got home a little while ago."

"_We?_ Is Detective Beckett with you?"

He was suddenly very glad that he'd gone into the kitchen for a bit more privacy. "No, I'm here with Ryan and Esposito."

There was a pause, followed by "Ahhh... You can't really talk, can you? Because they don't know anything about...stuff...yet, right?"

He laughed, just in case the guys could hear. "You got that right, pumpkin. So, when are you going to be back, anyway? Still in time to eat and catch up with your old man?"

"You got it. And I know we have a lot to catch up on. Oops...we have to go back in now. Talk to you later. Love you, dad."

"Love you too." He disconnected the call and walked back into the living room. And as he did, he noticed that the phone flipped right back to the game that was in progress when Alexis had called. "Ah! Ryan! Catch!" He tossed the phone to Ryan. "Your game is still live! And the asteroids are glowing red! Hurry!"

They played for a while longer, until Ryan got a call from Jenny, which disrupted his concentration long enough that he exploded. "Damn! No, not you, honey. Castle just has...oh, never mind. What? No, of course I didn't forget. We just...I'll be there soon." He put his phone away and handed Castle's phone back to him. "I forgot."

"What?"

"Dinner with Jenny's parents. We were going to drive out early, before dinner. So bro," he looked at Esposito, "looks like we have to go. Hey, Castle, don't suppose we could take your phone with us?"

"Not a chance, but you can ask Dave if he can get you your own copy tomorrow. He really is a good guy."

The guys left and Rick went over to his couch, snagging a couple of pretzels out of the bag on the table as he plopped down. Then he closed his eyes and thought of Kate, a smile forming on his lips. He was really going to have to get a new couch-one with a chaise lounge on one side. After the last two weeks, he was rather fond of couches with chaise lounges built in.

He wondered how it was going with Lanie. And then, as if by some weird cosmic force, he heard his phone emit the tone for a new text message. He popped the last pretzel into his mouth as he reached over and tried to grab it off the table, but he wasn't close enough. So he leaned, a little too much, which resulted in him tipping off the couch onto the floor. It wasn't that long of a distance, but it made him inhale sharply, which resulted in him inhaling some of the pretzel, sending him into a coughing fit.

In between coughs, he managed to read the message, which turned out to be from Kate. "VERY interesting developments with Lanie. Call me when you can. Love, K."

Immediately, he hit the speed dial button for Kate on his phone. She answered with a low "Hi."

He was going to give her one of his standard creative greetings, but then he realized he had a bit more pretzel dust still caught in his windpipe as the only thing that came out of his mouth was the sound of coughing.

On her end, Kate looked at her phone. Putting it back to her ear, she said "Castle? Rick? Castle, are you okay?"

He managed "Fine..(cough)...just...(cough cough)...pretzel..."

"Fine, whatever, just get it all out," she told him. She shook her head and rolled her eyes, even though she knew he couldn't see her. "Geez, Rick, why did you call me if you were still hacking a lung out?"

"Thought I was...(cough)...done. Inhaled pretzel. Not good."

"_Why_ did you inhale a pretzel?"

"I heart the text come in. And I was eating a pretzel, but I couldn't reach the phone and I fell off the couch."

"You fell off the couch? Are you and couches at war all of a sudden? I mean, your little flip trick down in Flor-"

"Don't remind me. So what's so _very interesting_ about your talk with Lanie?" Confident that he was over his coughing fit, he popped another pretzel into his mouth.

He heard a sigh from the other end of the phone. "She found the engagement ring in my suitcase."

He was _not_ expecting that! Forgetting he had a pretzel in his mouth, he drew in a sharp breath. And promptly started coughing as he choked on the pretzel again.

Kate rolled her eyes on the other end of the phone, not bothering to say anything as she waited for him to finish his coughing fit. When he came back to the phone and could talk again, he simply said "What? Oh, my God! How?" but in a somewhat more hoarse voice from all of the coughing.

"Castle, before we go any further, do me a favor, huh. DON'T eat anything else!"

"Have you no sympathy when I choke?"

"No. Now back to the topic at hand, she was helping me unpack. I, uh, kind of forgot about the ring being in there, and she found it when I left to get a glass of water."

"You _forgot_ about the ring? How could you _forget_ about the ring? Don't you like it? Do you want a different setting? I could get you-"

"Oh, shut up, Rick. The ring is fine. It's beautiful and you know it. I just wasn't concentrating on that, right now, thank goodness actually, because it's been constantly in my head since you gave it to me so it was a nice break to not be thinking about it for a change. I just didn't count on Lanie finding it."

"Are you sure? I know it wasn't from Tiffany's and a lot of women want Tiffany's. And you know I can afford to-"

"Rick, focus! _The ring is gorgeous!_ Okay? I don't need Tiffany's. But anyway, it gets worse."

"How can it get worse?"

"So I pretty much saw the punk go up in smoke after that. I had to come clean with her."

"I can see where that might happen. But you didn't even try to convince her that it was from Dave?"

"Honestly, I didn't even think of it. It just caught me so off-guard, that I didn't know what to say. I just figured that when she saw the ring, she knew. And she started asking me questions like only Lanie can do. So I just answered them, and I was honest, and she said she was really happy for me and she hugged me."

"She what? She didn't threaten to do something to you? Or to...me?"

"No. She was just really...nice. But she said she could see that I was happy, so she was happy. And then she got called out for a body drop because Perlmutter was sick, and she left. Well, she left after I got in a few questions about Esposito."

"Esposito? But he was with me. Playing Universal Domination."

"Lanie and Esposito. You know."

"Oh, that. She still didn't cop to anything?"

"Nope. She just tried to leave _really_ fast after that."

"But Kate, if Lanie was actually _nice_, and she didn't threaten to maim me and then kill me and then dispose of my lifeless body in a vat of acid-"

"Rick," she warned.

"Right. You said it got worse. Then what, exactly, is 'worse' about her being happy for you and not wanting to kill me because we mislead her?"

"She thought that the ring was from Dave!"

There was a pause at the other end of the phone for so long that Kate was beginning to worry that their call got dropped. "Rick? Are you there?"

"Yeah," his voice came right away, "I'm still here. I'm just...Kate, I'm usually pretty quick with these things, but I must be slow right now because I still don't see the problem."

"What do you mean you don't see the problem? She thought the ring was from Dave! She thought Dave proposed to me!"

"But isn't that what we wanted her to think all along? I mean, not about the proposing, but about you and Dave? You know, until we do the big reveal tomorrow night?"

"Uh...I..." Kate didn't know what to say. She'd been so flummoxed by Lanie finding the ring in the first place, and then by her still thinking that it was Dave that she'd been talking about, when it wasn't, that she'd failed to see that their little charade was basically still going according to their original plan. "I didn't think of it that way."

"Obviously. That's why you keep me around, right?" She could hear the smile in his voice.

"That, and a few other things." She smiled as she thought of the other things, but then she remembered their discussion. "But Rick..." she trailed off.

"What?" When only more silence greeted him on the other end of the phone, he prompted gently, "Come on, Kate. Tell me what you want to say."

She bolstered her courage and tried to find the words. "I still think I should tell her. I mean, really tell her. It's one thing to do it to the guys, and to do it to the guys when we were so far away and everything, but after being face to face with Lanie, I just don't know if I can pull it off. I mean, we were on vacation and it was fun and everything, but now we're not. I know you wanted to play this trick on them, and even I thought it was a good idea then. But when I was on the phone with her, that was different somehow, but I just don't know if I can stand in front of her and basically lie about this now. Lying to a friend...it's just not the right thing to do."

She heard him sigh on the other end. He could hear her turmoil. Even though he was half a city away from her, he could feel her emotional confusion. She was right; it was a totally different thing to live a scenario face to face with someone rather than just plan it out almost hypothetically. And it was with her friend-a friend who could be annoying blunt at times, but nonetheless, she was a friend with a good heart who had stuck by her and supported her when she had precious few other people to do that. As much as he might love a good story or a good trick, it wasn't worth the price of her inner peace. "Go ahead," he told her in a low, but almost commanding voice. "Tell her. Come clean with her. She deserves to know the truth, and you need her to know."

"But what about the grand plan?"

"The 'grand plan', as you call it, is great as long as everyone's having a good time. But you're not, anymore, are you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I can tell that you're having second thoughts. Your heart isn't in this anymore."

"But what about the ring? She saw it, Rick. If she knows that we're involved, that she'll have to know that the ring is from you."

He thought about it for a moment, and then had a realization. "I don't care. She can know that too. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of it. I stand by it. And if this gives Dr. Parish the opportunity to know that I'm serious and I'm committed and I'm not fooling around, then good." He sounded resolute.

They were silent for a minute or two. "Are you mad?" The voice on the other end of the phone was soft, tentative as it asked him the question.

"Mad? At you? No way. Don't even think that. It would have been fun as a joke, sure. But it's gone out of the joke realm for you, and then it's not fun anymore. And I'm supposed to be your fun, not make your life harder, right? So you tell Lanie, and then you can have someone to gossip with about how awesome I am." He said it with a smile, and Kate could almost see that smile by his words, through the phone.

"At the risk of inflating your ego, I'll concede that you're mildly awesome," she told him, not only relieved that he seemed to understand, but that he was okay with not continuing the plan that they had put so much effort into creating and carrying out.

"Only mildly?" he asked, sounding dejected, although she knew he was kidding.

"Yes, only mildly. If I tell you that you're really awesome, then I just know you'll float away on a massive ego cloud and I'll be left to deal with everything at the Old Haunt all alone tomorrow night."

He laughed, and he could feel her tension go down several notches. They kept talking, but they deviated from the topic of the ring, and of the punking plan. They laughed, and they joked. There was some innuendo, and although it didn't go anywhere near the level of phone sex, it was definitely a different phone conversation than they'd ever had in the past. And that, in itself, was fun. And it was comforting because even though they weren't physically together, they were home, and it was apparent that the same level of intimacy that they'd achieved on their trip was still present between them.

They ended up talking for so long that when Rick heard a key in the door, and saw it opening to reveal a red-headed whirlwind making a beeline toward him, he was suprised. He stood up when he saw her but almost got flattened back onto the couch from the exhuberant hug that his daughter gave him. Kate could hear the happy exclamations of the teenager, and said "Rick? Is that Alexis?"

"Yes. Ugh," he grunted as she grabbed him in a hug. "She's home from the homework play she was at. I wish I'd had homework like that when I was in school."

"Well, I'll just go then. You catch up with your daughter." She was disappointed that their talk had come to an end, but she knew they both needed time together.

"Are you sure? I can put you on speaker."

"No! She hasn't seen you for two weeks because of me. Spend some time with her. That's an order. Not that you ever follow orders, but there's always hope for change, right?" She tried to inject a light tone into her voice.

"Definitely. I'll talk to you later, Kate."

"Bye, Rick."

And with that, the call was disconnected, and she was once again alone.

She'd actually been alone the whole time, but now she _felt_ alone. She envisioned Rick with his daughter, hugging her and excitedly catching up on all that had happened. And she felt...envious. She didn't begrudge him any of it. He was a great father, and Alexis was a great kid. But he had someone to come home to, and she had...her apartment. But she liked her solitude. She did. But then she looked around at the walls. There was a lot of solitude here, an awful lot. And for some reason, today it bothered her just a little bit, made her restless. And her roaming eyes stopped and rested on the ring that was sitting on the table. And for some reason, this time when she looked at it, it didn't evoke the same feeling of fear and nervousness that she usually felt when she laid eyes on it. She looked at it, and she could just see hope. A family. A future.

So she reached over and picked up the box with the ring, and hugging the small box to her chest, laid down on the couch. And she thought about all of the reasons that she was absolutely not ready to get married. The only problem was that today, right now, there just didn't seem to be as many reasons as there were a couple of days ago.

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_**This was a bit of a 'heavy' chapter, but I thought this content was needed in here. I hope it wasn't too boring or...just ugh. **_

_**So, let me know what you think! I'm up to a whopping 390 people who are following this story! Only 10 more for 400...wow! I hope all of you 390 are still enjoying it. If you are, let me know!**_


	62. Chapter 62

_**This chapter is almost totally Castle/Alexis. No punk, no Caskett. I think this needed to be done, and it wouldn't really be realistic to have him come home and not do something like this. Hope you all don't find it tedious or boring. If you do, oh well. ;-)**_

_**And woo hoo...I only need 3 more people for to reach the **500** mark of those who have this fic story-alerted. WOW!**_

_**Once again, thank you SO INCREDIBLY MUCH to all of those who take the time to read and review after each chapter, even if it's just to say that you liked the chapter. Each and every comment means so much! And thanks and welcome to all of the new people that are getting caught up!**_

_**Disclaimer: the usual. Don't own anyone. **_

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"Oh, pumpkin, it's so good to see you!" Done with his phone call, he wrapped his arms around his daughter after he put the phone in his pocket.

"I missed you, Dad," Alexis said into his shoulder.

He put his arm around her and sat her down on the couch with him. "I missed you, too. Did you keep your grandmother in line for me?"

"For the most part. Only a few minor blips on the graydar, but they didn't last long. We may have done a little bit of retail therapy to make up for it though."

"Retail therapy? Great. So I should lock myself in a padded room when I read the charge statements?"

"Well, that's entirely up to you. I know how you like bouncy houses, so a padded room might not be a bad idea to de-stress you."

"So, after all of this retail therapy, I don't suppose you'd want any, oh, presents, would you?"

"You got me stuff?" Alexis asked excitedly, but then the smile on her face dimmed just a bit as she asked. "You didn't get me clothes again, did you?"

She would have almost laughed at the chagrinned look on his face, had she not remembered the outfit he'd gotten her the last time he was on a book tour. It was her size, yes, but the rest of it...ugh. It made her look like she was trying to be a really hip senior. Senior citizen, that was, not high school senior. But her dad had looked so excited and she didn't want to disappoint him or burst his happiness bubble, so she wore it to school the next day. Or at least that was what her dad thought. She had spare clothes in her backpack and she'd changed in the bathroom in the downstairs lobby. Then she'd changed back when she got home from school. And then in a moment of sheer desperation, she'd decided that her whites were dingy and she needed to do a load of wash right then and there, and she'd 'accidentally' spilled bleach down the front of the tacky clothing ensemble. Of course, it didn't hurt that between the strong smell of the bleach and the latent acting genes that she'd received from her grandmother, she was able to come up with some rather convincing tears of remorse at ruining the 'wonderful' outfit that her father had just bought for her. She felt really badly about intentionally ruining perfectly good clothes, but she didn't want to hurt her dad's feelings and that was the only thing she could come up with at the moment to get out of her predicament.

Of course, her dad did find out eventually, when Martha had come home later and her dad had shown her the ruined ensemble. When her dad had asked Grams 'Wasn't it terrific?', her grams had turned up her nose and pronounced the ensemble 'terrifically hideous' followed by a 'Really, Richard, what were you thinking?'. Alexis breathed a sigh of relief, but then was forced to admit what she'd done when her grams had looked at her knowingly. So her suspicion as she asked her father what he'd gotten her was quite warranted.

But the look on his face quickly went from chagrinned to sneaky, a cat-that-ate-the-canary type of look. "Yes, Alexis, as a matter of fact, I did buy you some clothes. Come with me." He led her into his bedroom, where he'd dropped all of the bags after he got home. When they walked into his bedroom, he went right over to one of the bags and took out the teeny-tiny tank tops. Steeling himself because he thought they were still a little _too_ teeny-tiny, he turned around to find his daughter regarding him with a look on her face like she, too, was trying to steel herself in preparation for something unpleasant about to happen. When he held out the tank tops, the look on Alexis' face was priceless as it went from skeptical, to amazed, to happy.

"Dad! Oh, my gosh! This is...these are great!"

"I have one more thing." He turned back to the bag and brought out the ripped-uh, distressed-sweatshirt, which, when he presented it to her, earned him another jaw-on-the-floor look from his daughter.

"Dad!"

"Okay, how bad is it? Are you going to bleach it again?"

"No! But...Dad...you got some fashion sense! How did that happen?"

Rick grinned, giddily happy that she liked the items, and not in the least perturbed because he'd been wrong. Because while he'd been wrong about the clothes, there was one other important point that he remembered: Kate had been right. When they'd chosen the items yesterday and Kate had stood up to him and had refused to let him buy the other things that he'd picked out, he felt some sort of...pride. Like she was becoming part of the family, standing up for his Alexis like she did. And now, it seemed that she was definitely right. And for some reason, he couldn't wait to tell his daughter how wrong he'd actually been. Happily.

"It didn't. I didn't. Get any fashion sense, that is. Well, I was told that I don't have any, at least not for a teenage girl. I had the most adorable sweatshirt picked out for you! It had these big flowers with some really sweet little butterflies and they even had some sequins on them! But Kate told me that there was no way that I could get it for you."

Her eyes got big. "Dad...butterflies? And _sequins_? God, Dad, thank you _so_ much for not getting me that." Then she had a thought and she looked at him through narrowed eyes. "You _didn't_ get it for me, did you?" He heard the tense hopefulness in her tone.

Rick laughed. "No, pumpkin. Kate picked these out. And then she threatened me if I bought you the sequinned butterfly number. So I got you these things instead."

"Detective Beckett picked this all out? Oh, that's so cool! I just know we're going to find a really great dress for me!"

"Do you really like everything? Or are you just saying that?"

"Yes, I like it all! I'll even wear it! And I promise, I'll even stay away from bleach. Thanks, Dad." She gave him a quick hug. "And thank Detective Beckett for me when you see her, okay?"

Rick pulled out his phone and hit his most frequently used speed dial button. He handed Alexis the phone and told her, "Here. Tell her yourself."

She looked momentarily surprised, but then she put the phone to her ear, somewhat hesitantly, like she didn't know what she was supposed to say. But after a few seconds, she broke out in a big smile and gave a little laugh. "He is, don't worry. Hi, Detective Beckett. It's Alexis." She paused, and then smiled. "Yeah, I know." Pause. Laugh. "Totally. Hey, Dad gave me the stuff that you picked out for me in Florida, and I just wanted to say thank you. I mean, really, really thank you from the bottom of my heart, because Dad also told me something about what he picked out, with butterflies and sequins-" she stopped talking for a moment, and then continued with a vehement "I know!" Laugh. Pause. Eye roll.

Rick did a double take. Did Alexis just roll her eyes, just like Beckett, when she was talking to Beckett? Oh, my gosh. If-no when-those two got together, he'd better watch out. They'd be the death of him if they teamed up against him. And he smiled at his daughter, who was intent on the phone call, knowing that even if they were the death of him, he'd die a very happy man.

"But anyway, thanks." Pause. "Okay, I will. Probably next weekend, or early next week? Good. Hey, Detective?" Pause. Smile. "Okay, Kate. Um, just ask my dad about the bleach sometime. And then you'll know how really great it is that you helped him pick out that stuff for me. Okay. Bye."

She handed the phone back to Rick, who looked at her smiling face and asked, "What's so funny?"

"She was. She was really surprised it was me, and when she answered the phone, she didn't even say 'hello'. She just said, "Castle, you should be spending time with your daughter now, not calling me.' It was kind of funny."

"What else did she say?"

Alexis rolled her eyes again. He couldn't believe it...two eyerolls in as many minutes? "Dad, you were standing right there! But she just told me to call her when I wanted to go shopping for my dress for the dance. And that was about it. Well, she told me to call her Kate."

He just smiled stupidly at her.

Alexis narrowed her eyes at her father. She knew that he and Det-uh, Kate-were involved now, and that they were serious, because after all, he'd told her that they'd both used the 'L' word. But now, looking at him, she could see the difference in him. He looked happy. Not that he didn't always look happy, but he _really_ looked happy. And he was just standing there as she was talking with Kate, and after she was done talking _to _ her and they were talking _about_ her, and he was grinning like an idiot the whole time.

"Dad, you are either on some really good drugs, or you are seriously besotted. In the romantic sense, I mean."

He laughed. "No drugs, pumpkin. Would I scar you for life if I say I'm high on love?"

"Not for life, but the intense sugary sappiness of those words might send me into a diabetic coma."

"Fine. I'll try to tone it down then." And he tried to wipe the smile off of his face, but it kept sneaking back as he led her back to the living room.

"Okay, Dad. I know there's something you're not telling me. I know you and...Kate are now an item. And you're serious, L-word and all of that. But what? I know there's more. I can tell."

He shook his head at her. How did she do that? "Pumpkin..."

"Oh, I know. You asked her to move in with us. Is that it?"

He was taken aback for a moment, because hearing her say it made him realize, even though Kate wasn't there right then, that they really _did_ have two separate homes. He'd gotten so used to living with her for the last two weeks that it still gave him pause to realize that he was at his home, and she was at hers. And they weren't the same home. But Alexis was still looking at him, so he tried to give her an answer.

"Uh, not exactly,"

"Then what?"

"Uh, I kind of...uh...gave her a little...well, not so little, actually, but it's really-"

"Dad!" she warned.

"Igaveheranengagementring." The sentence came out as one word all smooshed together.

Alexis blinked at him. "Okay, I thought I heard something, but I'm thinking I must have heard wrong. So can you try it again, a little slower this time?"

He took a deep breath. "I. Gave. Kate. An. Engagement. Ring."

Her mouth fell open. "That's what I thought you said." She got up and walked over by the fireplace, staring into the empty, dark space.

"Alexis. Sweetie, talk to me." Rick stood up, but didn't walk any closer to her.

"I just...it's fast. I didn't expect...I know I said something about you guys getting married, like being on a honeymoon, because that's what it seemed like, but I thought...I mean, not this fast, you know?"

"I know. Sometimes it seems like it's really fast to me too. But it also seems right. A lot's happened in the last couple of weeks with me and Kate, more than I ever thought would happen or could happen. Even with my imagination, and that says something!" he chuckled, and that got a small smile out of his daughter. He went over to her and put her hands on her shoulders from behind. "Are you mad at me?"

"No, I'm not mad. I'm just...still kind of stunned. It's not every day that a girl gets a new stepmother, you know. And you have to admit that the last one didn't turn out so well."

"Umm...you aren't getting a new stepmother, at least not right away. She hasn't answered me yet. And she probably won't, for a while."

She stared at her dad, really looked at him. He was casual, and he seemed so unbothered by the fact that he'd proposed to the one woman that she'd seen him have an adult, respectful relationship with, for the longest of any woman that she'd _ever_ seen him have a relationship with, and she hadn't given him an answer. She was left wondering why he seemed so okay about that. She would have thought that he'd want to just...elope or something. If he got an idea like _this_ in his head, she thought that there'd be no way he would be content to wait. "Huh? So you gave her a ring to just...do nothing with?"

"I know. Sounds weird. But with me and with us and how we are, I gave it to her so she would know that I was committed. My track record..." He shrugged.

"I know. You're not the poster child for half of a committed relationship."

He winced, but he knew it was true. Emphasis on the word 'was'. "I figured, what better way than to give her a ring, right? So I told her that she knew how I felt, and that I was ready whenever she was. I told her to get used to the idea and take as long as she needed. And I'm willing to wait. I know she's not going anywhere. But she's been hurt and she doesn't trust people easily and I can see where she wouldn't want to rush into something like this."

"Considering you guys just got together, you know, like dating and that type of thing, I bet you totally freaked her out."

"Thoroughly. But at least she didn't throw it into my face and run off screaming into the night."

"Now _that_ would have been a blow to your ego!" Alexis laughed.

She walked back over to the couch and plopped down. Rick watched her, and then he slowly followed her and sat down next to her, putting his arm around her shoulders and hugging her close to him. "Pumpkin, are you okay with this? Really?"

"Little late to be asking me that, isn't it Dad?"

The words stung a little bit. But he knew she was right. "Yes, it is. But I just..." He scrubbed a free hand over his face. "We had that conversation and you guessed that we were involved, and then you wanted her to take you shopping, and then you made the honeymoon comment..." he trailed off. "I just kind of always thought you'd be okay with it. I always thought you liked her."

"I do."

"She likes you, you know. You should have heard her when we were buying you those clothes. She just went around and picked stuff out, and she even threatened me when I wanted to buy the butterfly thing. She said that if I didn't buy you the 'good' clothes, she would, and then we could see what you chose to wear. She said I was uncool!" he said, saying the last word with a level of disdain that would generally be reserved for only the highest level of insult.

"Maybe." She was still looking down.

"So if you like her, and she likes you, then...what?"

"It's just kind of weird, Dad. You go away and you come back practically married. It was one thing to say something then, but now it's more...real. Even though I know it's probably stupid, I just wonder how everything will change. Will you be gone more now? Will you...I don't know. Are you going to have more kids?"

"And where will you fit in then?" he asked intuitively.

"I guess," she admitted in a small voice.

He tightened his arms around his little girl. Because even though she was a young woman, she'd always be his little girl. "You will always, and I mean _always_ fit in. You'll always be my pumpkin, and I'll always be your old man. Sweetie, Kate doesn't want to take me away from you. Didn't you just hear that when we just called her? She was yelling at me to spend time with you, you said it yourself. When you came home tonight and she heard you, she got off the phone really fast. She likes you. But she doesn't want to come between us...I know it right here," he said, patting his chest. "Just think, it might be really nice to have a gen-u-ine police detective around all the time to keep me in line. And if we decide to have kids? That would be great. But it's not going to be like 'out with the old and in with the new' and I'll just forget you exist or something. And just think, you'll be able to teach them all of the great ways to annoy their old man. And by that time, just think how old I'll actually be!"

She smiled just a bit, and then she said, "It's stupid, I know."

"No, sweetie, it isn't. It's natural. But I think you both could be good for each other. You already roll your eyes at me, just like she always does. You did it when you were talking to her. I can just imagine when you team up with me. And then you'll have a built-in shopping buddy, although I do worry about my gold card when that happens. And you know what else? I think we can be good for her. The woman works too much. We have to train her how to let loose and have a good time, Castle-style. I need you around for backup. I mean, do you know how long it took me to convince her to go parasailing? I finally had to resort to do the chicken dance on the beach until she said she'd go, just to save herself from the embarrassment. So see, I need help."

"You went parasailing?"

"Yes. Me, happily, Kate, under much duress. I'll show you the pictures later."

They sat in silence for a while, just snuggled together. Rick wondered at one point when his little girl had grown up so much. When he felt her quiver a little, he looked down at her in alarm, worried that she was crying. But he saw that she was trying to stifle laughter instead. "What's so funny?"

"The 'uncool' thing. Just thinking how funny it would have been...if you _had_ gotten me that shirt, I could have gotten you a sweatshirt that said 'Uncool Dad' and made you wear it."

"Cruel and unusual punishment, daughter."

"You've taught me well."

The silence returned. But after a few more minutes, Rick voiced the most important thing.

"Pumpkin?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

"I know. I love you too, Dad."

"Glad to hear it. Promise that you'll tell me if you start feeling sad or unsure about something?"

After a slight pause, she agreed. "Promise."

"Good." He kissed the top of her head and hugged her close for a brief moment.

"You know," she said after a few minutes, "it might not be so bad having Kate around a little more. Then I'll have someone to talk to about sex."

After the last word sunk into his brain, he turned her around quickly and all but shouted, "WHAT?" He was so dumbfounded by her casual observation that he didn't immediately register the smirk on her face. "You...you're...no...uh...you can't..."

She patted his arm. "Relax, Dad. Gotcha."

Only then did he realize that she was yanking his chain. A pout settled on his face. "That was a really mean thing to do, little girl. Just for that, you're making me chocolate chip pancakes for dinner."

She rolled her eyes at him but got up and went into the kitchen after giving him a kiss on the cheek. And he was left thinking again that yes, those two just might be the death of him someday, but he would very definitely die a very happy man.

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_**Hardly any Kate in that, but I know some people have asked for more Alexis, so here it is. Hope you liked it. I tried not to make her all happy happy joy joy, because I think even she would have at least some misgivings about what her dad announced to her, along with the suddenness of it.**_

_**And for those of you who think we're almost done and there are no surprises left, I do have a few. Never fear!**_

_**So...thoughts? As always, I love to hear from you!**_

_**On another note, it's almost sad that today is the last day of filming for season 3. Even though we still have 3 episodes left to see, it's just a reminder that the long summer with no new Castle is coming! Boo hoo!**_


	63. Chapter 63

_**Wow...It's been over a week? I'm so sorry! I guess I've been having some...what shall I call it? I guess...I've been having some motivation problems lately. The thoughts of this story are always in my head, and rest assured, I will finish it. But lately, real life has intervened. So if you're reading this, thanks for sticking with me! **_

_**And thank you (from the bottom of my heart) for all of the wonderful reviews about that last chapter. I'm glad that you liked the tone/attitude that I gave to Alexis. I could imagine that she would be blindsided by the ring developments, despite having already sort of asked her dad if Kate was going to move in. **_

_**Now for a WOW...and it's truly a WOW: when I published the last chapter, I said that I only needed a few more people and then I'd have 500 people who were following this story (story alerts). Well, at this time, I now have *520* people who have this on their story alerts. You are all AMAZING and supremely wonderful! And 13 of the new alerts have come in only the last several days, so I'm wondering if I'm still getting new readers. If I am, hey...drop me a review or a pm and let me know what you think. Don't be shy!**_

_**This chapter has a bit of Beckett introspection, to set up her first day back at work. Along with some other new type of stuff. Hope you like it.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, but I do like to borrow them.**_

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_Previously: Rick had a talk with Alexis and spilled the beans about the ring. She was unsure and had some conflicted feelings at the bombshell._

After Lanie left, after she talked to Rick and then Alexis, after she admired her ring and put her leftover Chinese in the refrigerator, Kate went to her bedroom and looked at her still-unpacked suitcase and bags and got to work. For about the third or fourth time since she'd bought everything, she was amazed at the sheer volume of new clothing that she had. And all of it was summery clothing, and casual. When would she wear this again? The thought almost made her a little bit sad. She couldn't wear it to work. The clothes evoked memories of the trip. She looked at the beautiful jewel-tone sundress and thought of when Rick took her out for her birthday dinner. As she took one of the tank tops out of a bag, she remembered how she'd been perched on a fence, looking at an alligator the first time she'd worn it. She unpacked a few more things, and then she found the sash that she'd used one of their first nights, the one that she'd put around Rick's neck as a joke when he was typing, but then the joke had ended up being on her as he flipped her onto his lap and they had a 'moment' before he bolted. And oh, was she annoyed by that! And she thought about how she wasn't only annoyed at him and how he'd practically run away from her, but at herself because of her own changing feelings and attitude toward him at the time. With all that had happened since then, it almost seemed funny how such a little thing as him having his arm around her, her sitting on his lap, or an almost-kiss would freak her out and leave her with butterflies in her stomach at the time.

All of these clothes! To think about not having much of an opportunity to wear them seemed like such a waste, and also was one more thing to make her realize that the trip was done, and it was back to the real world now. It was kind of sad. Well, maybe she could finally see Rick's house in the Hamptons this summer, and she could use some of the clothes then. It was strange to think about how she'd almost gone there last summer and what had eventually happened, and how far things had come since then. And when she'd least expected it.

It took her a while to unpack all of the clothes and find places for them and it was made even longer as she went through the recent memories that the different pieces evoked. Especially the bikinis, which she hid in one of her drawers, in back of her lingerie. She could just see Rick if he was here...he'd stare off into space with a smile on his face and say, "Ah, good times..." Then she shook her head and thought no, he wouldn't do that at all. He'd probably jump her.

Who'd have known that a couple of string bikinis could be that _fun_?

Finally, she got all of the clothes unpacked and put away. She set the picture frame that Rick had gotten her-the one almost like she'd gotten him-on the bookshelf in her living room. It looked a little bit silly, sitting there with no picture in it, but she wanted it sitting out where she'd see it and would remember to print a picture. Sitting back down on the couch, she saw her phone and thought it would be a good idea to give Lanie a call. If she was done with her case, maybe she could come back over. Kate really wanted to tell her friend the truth, to clear up all of the misunderstandings. It was so ironic that they'd been setting this up for several days, and Lanie was skeptical and even annoyed when she 'found out' about Dave, but then when she found the ring and when Kate thought she was busted, Lanie had mellowed out and, it turned out, was no longer skeptical and actually believed the ruse. And that was when Kate didn't want her to believe it anymore. She put her forehead in her hand and thought, with a chuckle, what a mess this was.

So she picked up her phone and hit Lanie's speed dial. She was surprised when it went to voicemail, again. Lanie had left hours ago; she would have thought that the ME would be done with her preliminary work by now. And she should have gotten Kate's message from before; the question briefly flitted across Kate's mind as to why Lanie hadn't called her back from the first message, but by then it was time to leave a message, so Kate just started talking into her phone, trying to sound cheery.

_"Hey, Lanie. I was just trying to call you again to see if you were free...we really do need to talk some more. Better yet, stop by or let me know if you're home; I can come over to your place too."_

And after she left the message, she settled down on the couch to look through the pile of mail that had accumulated while she'd been in Florida, glancing every so often at the phone laying on the table, wondering why it wasn't ringing yet.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At that moment, Lanie was sitting on her own couch, snuggled with Esposito, watching a bad movie on the TV. The movie wasn't the point anyway; the snuggling was. She heard her phone ring, but knew immediately by the ringtone that it was Kate. She looked up at Javier and shook her head. "There she goes again."

"Why don't you just answer the call? You can do some evasive maneuvers with the conversation. You're a pro at that."

"Long as I don't do any evasive maneuvers with you later, huh, baby?" she said coyly, stroking her finger down his jawline.

"Now you got it, chica." He leaned down and captured her lips in a kiss just as Lanie's phone beeped, signaling a new voice message. He raised up and looked at her phone. "What's that?"

"Nothing. She just left me another message. How much you wanna bet that she just wants to 'talk about' things more, namely you and me. Nuh-uh, I do NOT think so."

"You have to talk to her sometime."

"Sure. Sometime. But right now, I like this just the way it is." She snuggled in a little closer. "So she can just wait a little bit. Tomorrow, she'll have her first day back at work and that should be busy enough, and then we'll have the time at the bar when she's gonna be focused on this Dave. So we have a little bit of time."

"You can't avoid her forever, you know."

"Oh, I know, but you bet I can avoid her for a few days. And probably a little more after that, if I'm a good judge of her mood earlier. That girl is moony in love. If I just keep her talkin' about Dave, then she's not gonna worry about me and you."

"Sweet cheeks-"

Lanie whipped around to look at him. "Javier Esposito, did you just call me 'sweet cheeks'?"

"What?" He tried to protest, but then the smile appeared on his face. "You know how I like to-"

"Now you stop that! That is exactly the type of thing that's going to bust us in front of everyone else, when you got crap like that rollin' off your tongue as easily as your next breath."

"Crap! You know you-" he tried to protest right away, but she cut him off with a finger to his lips. The only thing she gave him for a response was a raised eyebrow and pursed lips with the sideways tilt to her head, but that was enough. "Fine," he said, grudgingly. "But anyway, _Lanie_," he continued, emphasizing her proper name, "I was going to say that this is _Beckett_ we're talking about. Moony in love or not, she is just _not_ going to let you off the hook, chica. If she wants to get the 411 on us, then she is _not_ going to just give up."

She sighed. "I know, sweetie, but I'd just like to keep it to ourselves for a little bit longer. You know how everyone can be. And maybe in the next few days, I can figure out a way to ease into this so we don't get showers of smack raining down on our heads."

"They all can talk smack pretty well," he agreed.

"You should know," she said dryly, referring to the grief that they all continually gave each other. They sat for a few minutes in silence and tried to concentrate on the bad movie in front of them.

Then, out of the blue, Esposito said, "So she's really acting moony? Beckett?"

"Yeah. Moon rocks and everything." Lanie didn't tell him that there was more than one meaning to her 'moon rock' statement, relative to the ring with the huge rock that she'd found, but she made a snap decision to keep it to herself out of respect for her friend, for just a little longer. Lanie knew she wasn't supposed to find it, so it was only fair that Kate got to share that bit of news herself whenever she decided to put it on. "But I don't know that you'd be able to see it...you're a guy. And I think once she's back at work...well, you know how she can be all business."

"I just want to see if Castle is the same. He says he likes the guy, and everything seems pretty cool with him, but I just don't know if I could follow someone around for that long with obvious feelings and then watch her go off with her third different guy."

"I know. But seeing her...she was different. It was hard to explain. With the other guys, she seemed a little bit into it, but never fully there, you know? But now? She's different. I just hope this guy deserves her."

Esposito gave a little nod. "Well, if it turns out that he doesn't, I know someone who can make the body disappear."

"You'd better believe it," Lanie agreed.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Later that night, after most normal people that she knew would have been settled in bed for at least a couple of hours, she was still awake. She'd tried to sleep, but just ended up tossing and turning when her mind wouldn't shut off. And Lanie had never called her back either. Darn that woman!

And then there was the bed. She didn't understand it. It was _her_ bed, after all, with _her_ sheets and _her_ comforter and _her_ pillow that she loved, but it just didn't feel right for some reason. So after a full hour of tossing and turning, she got up and turned on the light again, thinking the bright light might make her tired, since the darkness didn't seem to be doing it. She threw back the covers and went over to her bookshelf, where, after very little deliberation, she grabbed 'Heat Wave'. Even though she'd read it a few times already, she turned to the beginning and started reading from the beginning of the first chapter.

She got about twenty pages into the book and put it down when she realized that she could really use a glass of water. After padding into the kitchen for her water and then settling back down in her bed, she picked up the book again. When she was another forty or so pages into the book, she jumped in the extreme quiet of her room when her phone beeped, indicating a new text message. She put the bookmark into the book and, setting it down side of her, picked up her phone. And she smiled when she saw that she had a text message from Castle.

_"Are you asleep?"_

She smiled and bit her lip as she thought of an appropriate response for the sharp Mr. Castle. Finally, she decided on one. It was simple and not entirely truthful, but effective.

_"Yes."_ She had a smile on her face as she thought of what he might text back to her.

_"Really? Then how did you text back if you're sleeping?"_

_"I'm very talented, Mr. Castle."_

_"I KNOW that (probably better than anyone), but when you sleep, you SLEEP. So you're not sleeping if you're texting me."_

_"Sure I am."_

_"No, you're not."_

_"If you thought I'd be asleep, why did you text me?"_

_"Because I was lonely and I wanted to see your voice. If you were awake. Which you are."_

He wanted to 'see her voice'? Even though it would have made no sense to the average person, she knew what he was talking about...some communication was better than nothing. So deciding that if he went to that trouble, and he was still awake too, they might as well _hear_ each others voices. She hit the speed dial for his number, and it was answered right after the first ring.

"Ah, oh goddess of sleep, are you dreaming good dreams?" It was among the most interesting ways she'd been greeted on the other end of a phone call, even considering the Christopher Walken voice he'd used once when he'd answered the phone, years earlier.

"Oh, lord of glowing asteroids," she said, referring to the Universal Domination game from Dave, "have you found your otherworldly pleasures?"

There was a brief moment of silence on the other end, and she was confident that her response had thrown him for a mini-loop. But he never stayed down-or without something to say-for long. She heard the innuendo in his voice as he responded in a dramatic tone, "Ah, Detective, the greatest pleasure that I have ever experienced is not otherworldly, but is of this world. But alas, it has escaped me for the evening, leaving me lying here being tortured with want over what might have been, and could be."

She didn't say anthing for several seconds, and then she burst out laughing. "Geez, Castle, 'tortured with want'? Couldn't you come up with anything better than that?"

"Are you saying you aren't fond of my verbal prose?"

"I'm saying that 'tortured with want' makes it sound like you're writing some bodice-ripper. And considering that _you_ said it, that would be quite the interesting visual...you in a bustier or a corset, laces undone..." She laughed, and then said, "No, no, that visual is just way too disturbing." And hilarious. It made her think of the 'Strangers on a Train' case and the bet that had been made, where he would have had to wear a dress if he'd lost.

"I can't believe that you would dare to make fun of the verbal prose of a man who has written over twenty best sellers!"

"Well, you certainly didn't get over twenty best sellers using phrases like 'tortured with want'."

He adopted a haughty tone. "I fail to see what is so amusing about that phrase."

"It's cheesy."

"So is 'Go ahead, make my day,' but that one is famous."

"You're no Clint Eastwood."

"But I do have better hair." She rolled her eyes but didn't comment; she knew he was fond of his hair, especially after the commercials about the hair loss prevention products and his reaction to them during their second evening in Florida, watching game shows.

"So tell me, _darling_, have you decided to change your genre?"

"That depends. Are you available for research?"

"For torturing, or wanting?"

"For ripping your bodice. Because I can tell you honestly that that is one type of research that I could really get into."

"I have no doubt whatsoever that you would be very successful at that type of research."

There was a silence, and the next time he spoke, she heard the voice of the concerned Rick, not the cocky and bantering Rick. "So, are you going to tell me why you're awake when it's past midnight and you need your rest for work tomorrow?"

She tried to evade. "Why are _you_ awake?"

"I don't have a job, if you didn't remember. I just glom onto your job."

"Oh, yes, I do seem to remember something about an awful lot of glomming."

"Kate..."

She took a deep breath. "I couldn't sleep. I was trying to read when you called."

"Reading anything interesting?"

"Wouldn't you love to know?"

"I would!"

"In your dreams!"

"Always..." She heard the humor in his voice and it made her roll her eyes again. "So why are you still awake?"

"I really did try to sleep, for quite a while, but I just ended up tossing and turning so I turned the light on and got out a book." She thought a change of subject might be nice. "So how did it go with Alexis?"

"We had a nice night. Although I told her about us and she was...weird about it."

"But you said she already knew about us. When we were in Florida. So why would she be weird now?"

"Well, she didn't know everything, and I wanted to be honest with her, so I told her that I gave you an engagement ring."

"Oh, my God, Rick...you didn't!"

"I did. Well, she kind of guessed that something else was going on, so I told her. And she was so happy on the phone initially when I told her we were together, but then she started getting weird because of the engagement." Then he realized what he'd said, and clarified, "uh...possible, preliminary, supposed, potential, hopefully eventual engagement, that is."

"Glad you clarified that there, buster," she told him in her tough voice. "God, that poor kid. You just can't spring a potential stepmother on a kid, Rick. Especially not when the kid and the real parent are as close as you two are."

"I know that now. Her reaction really surprised me for a while. But she was so grateful about the clothes-that they weren't hideous, you know-and you should have seen her face...she actually _liked_ them! She really liked them!"

"Yes, Sally Field," Kate quipped. "Hey, what about the bleach? She said to ask you about the bleach?"

He made a harrumph sound before going on to explain the incident where Alexis had 'accidentally' dumped bleach on the outfit he'd given her. "I didn't see anything wrong with that outfit, you know. It was perfectly fine."

"Just like the butterflies and sequins were fine too, huh? Gotta hand it to that girl though...she's resourceful."

"That she is," he said with a note of pride in his voice.

"And she's sweet, to make it seem like it was an accident than to risk hurting your feelings by telling you she wouldn't be caught dead in something that I'm sure was equally as hideous as butterflies and sequins. So tell me, Rick, where do things stand now? Is she okay with this...with us?"

"She was worried about if we have kids."

Kate had been taking a sip of her water, and promptly started coughing. After she got her windpipe clear, she told him "Oh, my God, it's totally clear that she's your daughter, with the way she jumps ahead at light speed like you do! I mean I...this whole ring thing...and now Alexis...and kids? God, Castle, I don't even know what to think anymore."

"How about I love you and you love me and we're going to live happily ever after?" She could tell he was grinning on the other end of the call. "Oh, and don't forget the kids that will be chock full of amazing awesomeness."

"Discussion...tabled...remember?" she prompted, reminding him of their talk in Florida. Then she continued with a softer, more serious tone. "Why was she worried, Rick?"

"Displacement. Will she get pushed aside, etcetera, etcetera."

"Poor kid. Should I talk to her? I don't want her to think of me as an evil stepmonster." Too late, she realized what her words implied, and of course Rick picked up on it right away.

"Does that mean...?"

"No! It does not mean anything. I do not have any jewelry on my hands right now. So just don't even go there, Mr. Castle. It simply means that I like your daughter, and she's a nice kid, and I don't want to be the cause of her stressing out, because she's thinking that I'm going to try to come between her and the number one guy in her life right now. And I'm certainly in no hurry to start birthin' babies, and I'm _definitely_ not going to relegate her to the closet under the stairs."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few moments, followed by an exalted "Wow."

"What?"

"I don't think I've ever heard two such totally diverse literary references tied together quite so well."

She rolled her eyes. "Thank you for the compliment. I think. But you really need to focus."

She heard a yawn on the other end of the phone, followed by a muffled, "Sorry, but that was just so awesome! I mean, 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Harry Potter'? And you just said it without missing a beat! Wow. But yes, I know, you were talking about Alexis. And I love it that you care enough to worry about it. That alone tells me that everything will be okay, because we're both conscious of doing what we can so she doesn't feel left out or displaced. So...hey! You never told me how Lanie took the news."

Kate smiled, thinking how the ADD tendencies were running rampant right now, with him going between three completely different topics within the span of several sentences. And it worried her a little bit because she could follow him without a problem. But they weren't working a case, so who really cared anyway?

"I never got to talk to her. I left her another message, even told her to stop by, but I haven't heard from her. Nothing. Nada."

"Well, you can talk to her tomorrow. Or...uh...today. Kate, do you know what time it is?"

She looked at the clock. It was after one o'clock in the morning. "Yeah...guess I should try to get some sleep. Again."

"Sweet dreams. Wish you were here."

And that really summed it up, she thought. Because she wished the same thing, she realized with a start. "Yeah, me too," she said softly. "Night, Rick."

"Until tomorrow, Kate. Love you."

"Love you too."

She ended the call and set the phone on her nightstand. After shutting off the light, she realized what was wrong now and what had been wrong earlier too. It wasn't just that she'd gotten used to sleeping in a different bed. She realized that she was used to sleeping with Rick. She was used to him cuddling up with her, holding her, having her arm around him as she held him. She was used to feeling his breath on her shoulder if she woke up first, or being awakened with gentle kisses if he woke up first. Even after such a relatively short time, she realized that she was so used to the man that now, sleeping without him felt foreign; it felt odd and almost wrong. She wanted that arm around her, she wanted those lips on her skin as they whispered good night, and she wanted that body next to her that she could cuddle up to.

She tried to find a good position, but it still wasn't working. It just didn't feel right. But then an idea popped into her mind. She got up out of bed and went over to one of the bags that she hadn't bothered to unpack because she knew what was in it. She found her furry friends, Al, the large stuffed alligator and Marvin the happy stuffed mollusk. And she settled back into bed with them. They were no Rick, but they were something to hug, and they held the faintest scent of him, after having spent so many nights in the bed with them. So, hugging Big Al and leaning her face against Marvin, she was finally able to let sleep claim her.

* * *

_**There...that's the end of the chapter. Next up: first day back at work for Kate. I apologize again about the long time that has passed since I last updated. I don't know if I can promise to do any better in the next few weeks; lots of other stuff to do too. But I'll try.**_

_**For this story, there were actually a lot of characters in this chapter, so I hope I did them all justice and they weren't too OOC. **_

_**Thoughts? Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you!**_


	64. Chapter 64

_**Hi again!**_

_**Thanks for all of the wonderful reviews for the last chapter! I'm glad you liked how I portrayed that they both had problems sleeping without each other. But then I read Emma's latest chapter of 'What Pales in Comparison' and I was very grateful to everyone for the aforementioned wonderful reviews because I thought the way she did her 'not being able to sleep without you' scenario was better than mine. And I'm jealous! LOL! But she leaves amazingly great reviews for me, so I'll forgive her for being awesome! ;-)**_

_**I had some issues with this chapter, and it ended up deviating quite a bit from how I planned it. And now, I have to say that the ending of my story, as I have it in my head now after some sort of an inspiration (at least I hope I can call it an inspiration) has changed a little bit. The biggest change is that it will most likely result in more chapters. I had hoped, originally, to have this story done by the time of the season finale, but now with this latest development, that will most surely not happen. **_

_**So, that said, I hope nobody is terribly disappointed that the quicker wrap-up (original idea) idea has been scrapped for more chapters with a new plot development (new idea). I know I've gotten comments that people just want me to be done with the story already, so I apologize for that. If you're one of those people, I'd say to just remove it from your story alerts, and then you can read it all when it's finally finished, if you're still inclined. And if anyone suggests putting the new stuff in a sequel, that won't work. Trust me. **_

_**One part of this chapter is a bit strange. But strange has seemed to work for this story in the past, so I left it in. Hope you don't roll your eyes too badly. ;-)**_

_**Disclaimer: Still don't own any of the characters.**_

* * *

Kate awoke at about five a.m. after having slept fitfully for only a few hours. She slept deeply and dreamlessly for a while after she fell asleep with the stuffed animals, but then she was startled awake by something. It was still dark out, so she knew it wasn't time to get up yet. Her alarm clock said 3:11 a.m.. Her first inclination, her first waking thought was to wonder where Rick was, but then almost as quickly, she remembered that he was at his loft and she was at her apartment. They didn't 'live' together anymore. And surprisingly, the thought filled her with some amount of sadness, like something just wasn't right.

But then, although she did fall asleep again, it wasn't the same. When she fell asleep the second time, she eventually ended up dreaming of the stuffed Marvin. He smiled at her and she was dancing around in the sand with him, laughing and smiling. Rick was sitting there on the beach chair, watching her as she danced, an appreciative grin on his face and some fruity drink with an umbrella in his hand. And even in her dream-state, she knew how perfectly ridiculous that was-she would never be caught dead dancing around in the sand with a stuffed animal. And if she _was_ dancing around in the sand, then Rick damn well better be dancing with her! But because it was a dream, she was just along for the ride and couldn't really do anything about what her dream-state alter ego was doing, despite how stupid it may have been.

But then she hugged the Marvin in her dream, and everything went to hell from there.

As soon as she hugged Marvin, he grew. She pulled away, and the smile on his face got a little bit deranged. And then, as he continued to grow, he opened his mouth and swallowed her whole. She tried to fight her way out, but it was like being in a padded room of fluffy softness. She started yelling for Rick. She could hear him yelling for her, but it was muffled. Then, as she continued to try to fight her way out, she saw a hand reaching in for her. She knew it was Rick's hand, trying to get to her. She extended her hand toward it but she couldn't quite reach it. And as she tried harder, her eyes flew open, and she became aware that she was no longer enclosed in an enormous fluffy, deranged conch shell, but she was actually in her own bed, the blankets twisted around her. As she looked around the room, she glanced down at the real, stuffed Marvin that she was holding, the one with the adorably goofy smile, but the dream came back to her in a flash and, with a yelp, she pushed Marvin away from her before he became deranged too.

She reached over and took a drink of her water. God, she hated having weird dreams! A psychopathic, deranged, stuffed conch shell that spontaneously grew into a human-eating giant? And why couldn't the stupid dream have continued long enough so that Rick could save her, and the last thing she'd remember was something pleasant? Oh, she hoped the departmental psychologist never got ahold of that dream or she feared she'd be spending some time on desk duty.

She eventually went back to sleep, but only after securing the stuffed Marvin in the drawer of her nightstand. She tried just putting him out of reach on the other side of her bed, but her eyes still flitted open and found him staring at her. So she put him in the drawer. And then she locked the drawer. And as she did, she felt silly.

As she let her mind wander, she wondered what the bed in his loft was like. Knowing him, and the type of person he was, she figured that his bed was probably huge, and it was most likely one of the most comfortable pieces of bedroom furniture that existed on the face of the planet. And she knew it would feel even better with Rick next to her, especially now that she knew what it felt like after the last week. Well, unless he drooled on her; that wasn't a terribly pleasant feeling to wake up to. She could live without the drool. But by imagining of the potential comfort of Rick's bed and being next to him again, and knowing that her deranged Marvin was locked away in the drawer, she was finally able to fall back asleep. And she wished the whole time that Rick was right there next to her.

She briefly awoke a few more times, but was so exhausted that she managed to get back to sleep relatively easily. Finally, when she awoke that last time at five a.m., she knew she that sleep was done for the night because her mind was already awake and spinning, and she might as well get up and go to the precinct. Hopefully, Lanie would be in early, and she'd get a chance to talk to her. And it was time to go back to work. To the real world.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

In a different part of town, Rick had his own problems sleeping. The difference was that he knew from the start that it would be different sleeping-or trying to sleep-without his Kate next to him. He just kept thinking of the past two weeks, how their feelings had changed so dramatically. No, that wasn't true. Their feelings didn't change at all. Feelings that deep couldn't develop within the span of two weeks. The feelings had been there all along, and the close proximity and various random events finally forced them to acknowledge those feelings. And once they had, everything had just snowballed. And now that he was home, and she was home, and those 'homes' were not the same home, he seemed like he was missing something. He _knew_ he was missing something. Missing a part of himself. Missing her.

They hadn't really discussed how things would be different when they got home. Well, they had, but not much past the point of that they would see each other more frequently outside of the station. She was so intent on overthinking things and worrying about them, and he'd tried to calm her down by underthinking things. He didn't want to sit there and dissect every minute aspect of how things would be when they got home, when they still had vacation time left to enjoy. And basically, that was okay. But now, as he laid in his bed, he realized that there was one way that he wanted things to be different right now. He wanted her with him. She shouldn't be in a different part of the city, in a different bed. She had the ring, and he was confident that eventually, he would wear her down and she would utter that little three-letter word beginning with a 'y'. He said he wouldn't pressure her about an 'official' engagement, and he meant it. But in the meantime, right now, there was no reason that they couldn't take another step. They'd been already taking it for the past week anyway; this would just merely be...extending things. Hopefully permanently.

She needed to move into the loft. She needed to be with him, with them. And it couldn't happen soon enough. And tomorrow, he was going to do something about that.

If she lived with him, she'd be here right now, and they'd probably both be asleep, cuddled together, instead of cold and alone and merely _trying_ to go to sleep. They could wake up in the morning together, share a lazy good morning kiss. Maybe more, he thought with a smile. Or maybe not; that didn't matter. Being together...that's what mattered. And they weren't together if they were separate. And at that thought, he rolled his eyes at himself, because to even have such an uneloquent thought as that, he knew he must be tired.

He knew that he needed to try to get some sleep. And so he vowed to himself that tomorrow night, he would not be falling asleep alone. One way or another, he would have Kate by his side, in his arms. He didn't care where it was...her place, his place or The Plaza... as long as they were together.

So he pulled out his phone and sent her a text. _"Tomorrow night. Loft. All night. Together. No arguments."_

He didn't expect a reply; he hoped by now that she was sleeping. She could see the message when she woke up. He tossed and turned a bit more, finally piling some pillows on either side of him so the bed didn't seem quite so big...and empty. And he eventually did fall asleep, but he fell asleep hugging a pillow tightly, trying to use his vivid imagination to convince himself, at least for tonight, that it was Kate.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate swung her legs out of the bed and by instinct, grabbed for her phone. She was somewhat surprised to see a new text message from Rick. She noted the time, and then smiled when she read the message. She could almost hear the pout in the message as she read his words. But it touched her just the same. He missed her. Obviously, since the text message was from after she eventually fell asleep, and that meant he was still awake to send it. She realized that he wanted her there, and somehow, after the night she had, it meant a lot to her. It was a visible reminder that things didn't have to change now that they were back home, as he had tried to tell her in Florida. They could still have the occasional night together. But right now, they would just have to deal with the fact that it wasn't every night, and they'd have learn the new normal of sleeping apart. Of_ being able_ to sleep when they were apart. But as Kate set her phone down and yawned, she suspected that she was going to be drinking a lot of coffee during this learning process, because she feared that sleep was going to become a precious commodity. It already felt like it was.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Detective Beckett arrived at the 12th precinct at a little after six o'clock in the morning. She walked through the lobby and saw a smattering of beat cops that were hanging around at the end of their shifts. She made her way to the elevator and up to her floor. She saw that her desk was almost exactly as she'd left it that Friday before she went out for lunch with Castle; when the plan was already well in motion, she figured, but she had absolutely no idea. She saw the remaining pile of the files she'd been working on; the pile that was large initially, but that had mysteriously started to shrink whenever she left the room. She remembered telling Castle about it at lunch, to which he said there was no way he was taking her files. Well, she thought now, no he wasn't, but she was sure that there was some reason for the strange phenomenon, and she figured the name of the phenomenon was either Ryan or Esposito.

Now she knew that there was nothing special about those files that required her immediate attention. It was all part of Rick's plan. She sat down in her chair and shook her head as the enormity of everything hit her again. It was always sneaking up on her at strange times, like now. Whenever she had pictured this moment when she was back at her desk again, she imagined just diving into paperwork, or being called out on a case right away. She didn't imagine sitting at her desk, early in the morning when practically nobody else was around, and thinking again about the events of the past sixteen days. But now that she was back here, it was hard _not_ to think of everything. She thought of how meticulously Rick had planned everything, and again, she was struck by all of the details. The house. The plane. Packing for her. Getting her time off work. _Kidnapping her!_ Each of them would have been a feat all on its own, but to do all of them...she was struck again by the enormity of everything.

She looked at her dad's watch on her arm and saw that she'd been gathering wool for over half an hour. She just hoped nobody had seen her. So, resolving to get her mind back on track, he looked around, and then she noticed the murder board. She walked over to it and tried to make sense out of what she saw. The murder looked like it was from a few days ago. Jonathan Hill, age 31, gunned down on the street Friday night, a few doors down from a hot new restaurant. Potential witnesses all around, yet nobody saw anything helpful. The guy looked clean-cut and happy in his picture. The crime scene photos showed the same man in a nice suit, dressed up for an evening out, yet lying on the sidewalk in a puddle of blood, his chest riddled with bullet holes, his eyes vacant in death.

She leaned on the back of the desk in front of the murder board, studying all of the notations. But she'd need the files. The murder board was just the synopsis, the bones; she needed the meat of the files, of the research. As she was studying everything, she became aware of a presence next to her. She looked over and saw Esposito leaning on the desk like she was, gazing sideways at her, waiting for a break in her concentration.

"Hey, Esposito. Long time, no see," she joked.

"Around here, anyway. Glad you remembered the way back. And it looks like you just couldn't stay away, you bein' in here this early your first day back from paradise."

"Well, you know, that whole internal clock thing." She wasn't about to say how she couldn't sleep because she no longer had a certain body next to her. He eyed her with a strange look on his face but didn't say anything. So she gestured to the murder board as she instructed, "Fill me in."

"You got the basics from the board. Vic was going to meet his girlfriend for a romantic dinner. She arrives first and she's waiting for him in the bar. He calls her and says he's almost there, he's walking down the street. She decides to go outside to meet him, and they're still on the phone together. She sees him about a block away. She's wearing a new dress, hot little number that she wanted to surprise him with, so she just stands there until he can see her. She said he stopped walking when he saw her, then said something suggestive to her through the phone but then started walking toward her again. Then, she said something made him glance toward the street, and he said something like 'What the hell? What are they...", like it was a question of some sort. Girlfriend heard the whole thing on the phone. Then whoever it was pops him with five rounds to the chest, silencer, walks off into the crowd."

"Wow." She shook her head. "Anyone see anything?"

"Bunch of conflicting statements."

"Of course. Girlfriend?"

"Tunnel vision on the vic. And it happened pretty fast. Took her a couple of hours before she could even talk coherently after seeing what she did."

She shook her head. "Definitely not a nice ending to what you thought would be a romantic dinner with your boyfriend," Kate remarked.

Esposito took the evidence photos out of her hands and began shuffling through them. "Found this in the guy's pocket after he was brought to the morgue," he told her, holding out a picture.

Her fast intake of a breath indicated the surprise she felt as she looked at the photo of the sparkling ruby and diamond ring. There was no doubt in her mind that it was an engagement ring. "So he was hoping he'd be more than a boyfriend by the end of the dinner," she surmised, and then exhaled a loaded breath. "He was going to propose to her."

Esposito nodded solemnly. "And he got gunned down in front of her."

She slapped the photo down on her lap and looked up at the ceiling. "Shit."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After Esposito finished filling her in on the case and all of the dead ends, she went into the breakroom and made herself a cup of espresso. Where was Rick...Castle? He had to be Castle here. Well, if he wasn't here, she hoped he was still sleeping.

After she took the espresso back to her desk and sat down to look at the files, she heard her phone ring and she looked at the display. She tried to stifle the smile from overtaking her face when she saw it was Rick. She looked around quickly before accepting the call, and seeing that nobody was within earshot, said "Hey."

"Hey yourself. What happened to 'Beckett'?" he asked, trying to imitate how she usually answered her phone.

"Nobody's around right now. So where are you? Will you be in soon?"

"About that..." he trailed off, sounding guilty about something.

"Rick, what did you do?" she said under her breath. He didn't arrange for some singing telegram or something, did he? Oh, she would absolutely _kill_ him if he did that! "Please tell me you're not planning something embarrassing! If you do, I swear I'll hold a spot for your picture on the murder board!"

"No, no! So testy, Detective! No, I was just going to tell you..." she heard him sigh loudly, like he didn't really want to tell her whatever it was that he was about to say. "That I won't be coming in today. I can't make it."

* * *

_**There's the latest. Don't worry, I have part of the next chapter written, but I may have to post a chapter of Blizzard before this one. I left Blizzard at kind of an 'interesting' place and I think it's begging for an update. Anyway, I'm sure you all figured out the strange part that I alluded to earlier: Marvin the deranged mollusk who grows into humongous proportions. Has anyone ever had strange dreams? I'm sure I can't be alone. It could make for some interesting dream interpretations later on, if I decide to do that.**_

_**So let me know what you think. You know the drill.**_

_**And so far, I'm being REALLY good about that spoiler clip. Yes, I know roughly what's in it from reading the message boards, but I've restrained myself and I haven't watched it. I kind of can't believe it because I generally have no willpower. But I was disappointed with the clips for the freezer scene and the LA hotel room scene showing basically all of the good stuff. So I'm trying not to watch this one.**_


	65. Chapter 65

_**Okay, I lied. But I really didn't intend to.**_

_**I said I was going to do a chapter of Blizzard before another chapter of this story. I really intended to do that. But then I started writing this one...and then, poof, I had a chapter. But I will try to update Blizzard next.**_

_**Hope you enjoy this next chapter!**_

_**Disclaimer: same as usual-I don't own any of the characters, just borrow them.**_

* * *

_Previously:_

_"Nobody's around right now. So where are you? Will you be in soon?"_

_"About that..." he trailed off, sounding guilty about something._

_"Rick, what did you do?" she said under her breath. He didn't arrange for some singing telegram or something, did he? Oh, she would absolutely kill him if he did that! "Please tell me you're not planning something embarrassing! If you do, I swear I'll hold a spot for your picture on the murder board!"_

_"No, no! So testy, Detective! No, I was just going to tell you..." she heard him sigh loudly, like he didn't really want to tell her whatever it was that he was about to say. "That I won't be coming in today. I can't make it."_

"You won't?" The involuntary wave of disappointment she felt as she realized she wouldn't see him was new. "Why not?"

"Paula called me. She knows we're...I'm back, and she set up meetings for me with the publishers and some other people. They need to schmooze the author every now and then. Really, it's just a big ploy to try to feel me out about how I'm writing, see if their investment is sound, get their two cents worth in about what they want to see in my books. That sort of thing. They set up a meeting, tell me how great I am, tell me they want to see more this and less of that, I agree with them with a smile, and then I go home and write whatever I want and they tell me it's wonderful. It's all part of the game. But Paula scheduled meetings all morning and the better part of the afternoon, so I'm booked."

"I'm surprised you're not telling her to forget it, that you're doing 'research'." Avoiding it or blowing it off seemed more like the Castle modus operandi.

"Unfortunately, I've done that the last two times she's scheduled these things," he admitted reluctantly.

"Ahhhhh, I get it. You've already ducked out too many times and they're on to you. Three strikes and you're out. Don't have any more 'Get Out of Jail Free' cards left, huh?" she asked him, certain that the smirk on her face could be heard through her voice.

"Much to my dismay, no. And you're quite liberal with the metaphors today...baseball and monopoly? Although the diverse literary references from last night still take the cake. And you have to know I''d _much_ rather be with you." But then his voice brightened as he suggested, "But I could get out of it if you arrest me!"

She rolled her eyes. "For what? Excessive annoyance isn't grounds for arrest. Neither is resisting the schmooze."

"Hmmm...we could try public nudity. That usually works for me."

"Castle, it's winter." Her voice lowered. "And weren't you the one who was telling me about shrinkage a few days ago? Do you _really_ want to risk a public viewing of that? Your reputation, remember?"

She heard the wince on the other end of the phone. "Good point. I'm still used to thinking it's warm outside."

She looked around again to make sure that there still wasn't anyone within earshot, and there wasn't, but she lowered her voice anyway. "Besides, I would prefer that your naked, rebel ways are reserved exclusively for me."

"Good to know." She could almost hear the cocky grin on his face.

"Just go to your meetings. Get them out of the way. And I'll see you tonight at the Old Haunt and you can really unwind after your day."

"And then?" he prompted.

"And then what?" she countered. She knew he'd want to bring up the text sooner or later, but she couldn't resist playing with him by feigning ignorance.

"My text, Kate. Tonight. Us. My place." And then he uttered three more words, in a low, sexy voice that made a shiver of anticipation run up her spine. "_All night. Together._"

She took a deep breath and tried to adopt a casual voice. "Oh, _that_ text. I suppose I'm free."

But she wasn't prepared for the next words. "Pack a bag, Kate. A big bag. Because you need to move in."

The comment was so out of left field and was spoken with such serious resolution that her brows furrowed and she uttered a surprised "What?"

"You heard me. I mean it. You need to move in."

He couldn't possibly mean what his words made him seem like he meant. She knew she was tired, so she was sure she was misconstruing his meaning. So she took the next logical meaning. "Okay, I suppose a couple of nights would be okay. How many were you thinking?"

"All of them. Kate, _move. in. with. me._" The slow but sure way that he enunciated his words left no doubt in her mind as to what he was suggesting.

She waited for a couple of moments before she spoke, because she was too stunned by his calm statement to do much else. But she lowered her voice to almost a whisper and said, "_Move-in-with-you_ move in with you? Like, as in 'live with you'?"

"That's generally what the phrase means, yes. Cohabitate. Share living quarters. Same address. Same bedroom."

"Are you having a _breakdown_? I can't move in with you!"

"Yes, you can."

"No, I can't!"

"Why not? We've already been living together for the last two weeks, and that worked out pretty well. Kate, look...we were both miserable last night. Or I know I was. And I know you were up late because we were talking and texting, and you said you couldn't sleep. I could hardly sleep because I wanted you with me. I needed you with me. I'm _used_ to having you with me now, right there next to me. How did you sleep?"

"Fine." The denial was out of her mouth before she could think about it.

"Liar." Why couldn't she fool the man for even five seconds?

"Crappy, then. I'm going to have to mainline caffeine today. And Marvin is in big trouble and needs a psych evaluation. But I still can't just move in with you!"

On the other end of the conversation, Rick took his phone away from his ear and looked at it when she made her proclamation about Marvin. Marvin the Mollusk? What the heck did he have to do with anything? "What? Oh, never mind. But yes, you certain _can_ just move in with me. With us."

"And that's another thing. You have an 'us'. You have a family and it's their home too. You can't just...add some other random person to the mix."

"You're not some random person off the street, and you know that."

"But nobody's even seen us date. Nobody even _knows_ we're dating! I can't just move in with you!"

"Alexis knows. Yes, she was freaked out about the engagement thing...uh, potential, possible, maybe, sometime-in-the-future engagement thing," he corrected before continuing, "but I think she'd be fine with the moving-in thing. When I was talking about the...you know, she actually thought I was going to tell her you were moving in before I told her about the...you know."

Kate watched Esposito walk back into the bullpen with a cup of coffee and sit down at his desk, giving her a look as he sat down. She was going to have to wrap up this conversation. "Look, I have an audience here now," she said under her breath, turning away from Esposito's direction just a bit so he hopefully wouldn't be able to tell what she was saying. "Can we just table this like the other thing?" But somehow, since she knew that wasn't going to happen, she opened one of the files on her desk and pretended to look at it for a few minutes.

"Are you going to pack a bag? Because I'm not hanging up unless you agree to at least that much."

She sighed in exasperation. "Fine," she said softly, "I'll pack a bag and I'll stay at your place tonight."

"Three days."

"Huh?" she questioned.

"Three days. Or nights. So pack three changes of clothes."

"Fine..." she uttered as she rolled her eyes. How could she feel so defeated that he was ordering her what to do-and she was complying with it-but so thoroughly elated at the prospect of spending the next three nights with him, both at the same time? It didn't make sense. But still, she was fully aware of where she was having this conversation, so she shut the file folder, picked it up and strolled out of the bullpen in a purposeful fashion toward the file room, like she was looking for something. She felt Esposito's eyes on her as she left and she hoped that she looked at least mildly convincing.

"I'll call you later, okay? The first meeting is in about an hour, and then there's lunch, and then some other meeting. You can talk dirty to me. Get my mind off of how boring and tedious this day is going to be."

"Dream on," she said, trying not to laugh at the vision that entered her mind of participating in a little phone sex while she sat at her desk in the middle of the bullpen later. No, not happening.

"Always, Detective."

"I should go. I have a murder to solve."

"Oooo, anything good?" And despite her bringing it up first, his innocent question brought back the thoughts of the case. He'd provided a wonderful diversion from the dark thoughts of the case, as he always did, even providing more of a distraction than normal by asking her to move in with him.

But she hesitated before answering his question, before telling him about the man who was viciously gunned down on the street as he was on his way to propose to his girlfriend over a romantic dinner, while said girlfriend watched the whole thing. She hesitated when the image of the ring that Jonathan Hill carried with him when he lost his life filled her mind, and then when the memory of the ring that Rick had given _her_ quickly followed the other image. She _felt_ this case, especially now. And it was then that she leaned against the wall in the hallway as she responded softly, "No. It's a bad one."

He knew that voice. She was bothered by the case, on more than just a professional, justice-seeking level. There was something with this one that affected her personally. In just those few words, he could hear that it affected her. And when the next words came out of his mouth, there was none of the jovial tone in his voice from just seconds earlier.

"Do you need me? I can skip the meetings. I'll figure out something to tell Paula. This is more important."

"No!" Though the refusal was immediate on her part, she still felt the impact of what he said, what he was willing to do. And it gave her hope and warmth where before she'd just felt the beginnings of that cold knot of anger that she felt whenver she got a case like this one, where something was so vicious and when there was a component hit her on a personal level. But she knew that as much as he might want to be there for her, and as much as she appreciated that and wanted that herself, he still had another life, other responsibilities, his _real job_. "You go to your meetings. As much as we sometimes might forget, that _is_ your real job. Not this."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. I've solved murder cases without you before, Castle. I can do it again," she told him, trying to inject some humor into her words, like she always did when he made remarks like they couldn't live without him.

But his voice held no humor. It was stone-cold serious yet. "I'm not talking about the case, Kate. I'm talking about _you_. I can tell something is hitting you with this case, personally. I just want to be there for you if you need me. I've never really been able to be there for you before, not fully. Because of...everything. Distance. Other people. But I can be there for you now. And I want to be."

She could almost feel the words that he spoke wrap around her like a hug. And for some strange reason, she felt the beginnings of tears fill her eyes. He was right...it _was_ different now. She could lean on him fully, if she needed to. Even if she didn't, just knowing that she could had a profound effect on her. Those old walls didn't exist anymore. There weren't just jokes filling the silence because neither of them was comfortable enough to take that step to let the feelings fully show. And just knowing that he wanted to be there made her feel better. And it was so different than before their trip. Oh, him being there and helping did make things better, but there was that constant holding pattern that they were in, and they didn't even know it at the time. "I know. And just the thought that you want to be...well, that means a lot. But I'm going to see you tonight, all night, and that's different now too. So you do your thing today, and I'll see you tonight."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Go schmooze and be schmoozed. And I'm sure you'll bring back some stories."

"Count on it. Love you."

Borne of pure reflex because she was in the station, she looked around quickly before replying. "Ditto. You know."

"Yeah. I can speak a little more freely. We really need to get a code word or something."

"Well, _you_ think on that today when you're daydreaming during your meetings. _ I _have to get to work. We've been talking way too long already."

"Go catch the bad guys, Detective."

"And no signing female chests today, writer man."

"My pen only works on yours."

"Tonight, then."

"Tonight." And the call was disconnected.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

An hour later, Esposito had made a few calls based on a theory that Beckett came up with. He just shook his head after she started talking; it was scary how she did that sometimes, and Castle wasn't even with her this time. Well, he consoled himself with the fact that she was probably fresh after her two week vacation. And if he wondered where Castle was this morning, he didn't ask.

The guys had already looked into Jonathan Hill's background and he was squeaky clean. Not even a parking ticket. Stable guy, everyone loved him. Nobody had a bad thing to say about him. When Ryan got in, he echoed what Esposito said about there being no apparent reason that anyone would want the guy dead. They had been working diligently on digging into this guy's life since they got the case, and they couldn't find anything. Anytime they'd have an inkling of a lead, it would fizzle. When they met the plane with Lanie the day before, it was an attempt to take a break from the case and give their minds a rest, hoping that a new idea would pop into one of their heads. No luck.

Beckett sat there, leaning back in her chair, drumming her fingers together as she thought about the case. Finally, she said "Let's go see the girlfriend. Or should I call her the fiancee?"

"Probably girlfriend. We never said anything to her about the ring; we thought it would be best to keep that to ourselves for now."

"Can you call and ask her if we can stop by?"

"On it," Ryan told her, and turned to the file to look for her phone number as he picked up his desk phone.

Using the lull, she tried to call Lanie, but her call went straight to voicemail, so she was forced to, yet again, leave another message telling Lanie that they needed to talk. So the detective decided to go to the breakroom to get another cup of caffeine. On the way, she happened to glance at the elevator down the hall as the doors opened, and she saw Lanie getting out. Their eyes met as Kate, who was quite a bit down the hall from her, smiled and waved to her friend as she started walking toward her. Upon seeing Kate, Lanie's eyes got big but she quickly recovered and smiled at her. But the detective was thoroughly flabbergasted when, right after that, the ME turned right around and went back into the elevator, quickly stabbing at the button to close the doors.

"Lanie, wait! Where are you going? I need to talk to you!" Kate said in response to her friend's hasty retreat. She was too far away to catch the elevator, but she still hurried closer to it, a perplexed frown on her face.

Through the slowly closing elevator doors, Lanie told her, "Sorry, hon...I guess I forgot something in the lab. Gotta run! Sorrrrryyyy!" She finished her statement a split second before the doors came together, shrugging her shoulders in a half-hearted apology, even though her verbal apology sounded way too cheery to be sincere.

Kate stood there in the hall for a few moments, still as a statue, her jaw slack and her mouth hanging open.

"What the _hell_ was that?" she asked aloud, to no one in particular.

With no return call in response to her repeated attempts to contact her friend to tell her the truth about her and Rick/Dave since the previous afternoon, Kate had been getting a funny feeling, like Lanie was trying to avoid her. But she'd told herself that she was being ridiculous...there was no reason that Lanie would avoid her! That was stupid! _Of course _Lanie would call her back, because she would just _have_ to hear more about her vacation, and about Dave, and then Kate could tell her that Dave was really Rick. Or rather, her involvement with Dave was really with Rick.

But now, after several calls and voice messages that hadn't been answered-not even with a simple return text!-and especially after Lanie practically ran away when they'd just come face to face...well, Kate was now convinced that Lanie was indeed avoiding her. Why would her friend avoid her? Especially after drawing, pressing, cajoling and generally trying to force any and all intimate details of her trip and her new relationship out of her. Lanie was a wonderful friend, but she had never been so efficiently ditched by her before. And now Kate was more than annoyed, especially because she was trying to hard to tell Lanie the _truth_, for goodness sakes. So by God, if Lanie was avoiding her, she was just going to have to get to the bottom of this a different way.

Forgetting her coffee, she stalked back into the bullpen and right up to Esposito's desk. He looked up at her nonchalantly, and then stiffened as he saw the look on her face. Even Ryan noticed her dramatic and fear-inducing entry back into the large room, actually before Esposito did, and it was enough to make him sit up and take notice. If Ryan had had had time, he would have warned Esposito with a quick "Beckett's on the warpath" comment under his breath.

Her lack of sleep and her lack of a recent caffeine hit added to the sternness and the no-nonsense tone in her voice. "Okay, Esposito, spill. Why is Lanie avoiding me?"

* * *

_**I had to get a few details out of the way with this chapter, namely Rick's comment about why he won't be coming into the precinct, and also having the conversation that he vowed to himself that he would have with her, about her moving in with him. And also, the elevator scene with Lanie seeing Kate and so spontaneously and blatantly running away from her. I intended it to be humorous...I hope it came across that way.**_

_**Let me know what you think!**_

_**More to come about the case, and what I hope is a surprise with Rick's day away from the precinct. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter!**_

_**PS-I'm still being good...haven't watched any of the sneak peeks. I've been reading the boards so I basically know what they're about, but I haven't actually watched them. So it's not total sneak-peek-cold-turkey, but it's still pretty good for me (I have NO willpower). ;-)**_


	66. Chapter 66

_**Hi, everyone...I'm back! If you're reading Blizzard or follow me on Twitter, you know what's been going on with me lately, which is the bulk of the reason for the long delay in publishing this chapter. For those who don't know, I had knee surgery two weeks ago and it took a little while to get into a writing groove again. Well, that, and that when I did have my writing groove back, I was working on two chapters of Blizzard. But now I know it's time for some more 'Plan', so here it is. For some odd reason, it really took a lot longer for me to write this chapter than I thought it would. It just wouldn't flow for me. But at least this chapter is a lot longer than a lot of the recent chapters, so I hope that makes up for the delay (at least a little bit).**_

_**It's hard to believe that when I wrote the last chapter of this story, the season finale hadn't aired yet. I was pretty good about the spoilers; I ended up watching the one of Castle and Jim, but that was the only one. I loved the argument scene; it seemed like Castle was channeling the edginess of Captain Mal from Firefly (without the sometimes weird word usage) and I really liked that he was very blunt for a change, although he did still hold back when she pressed. But alas, I was not at all disappointed in the ending. Not at all. You know they won't address the ILY in a grand, dramatic sense right away, but at least I hope they do it in a way that isn't frustrating. But hey, it was SAID, so how cool is that?**_

_**I'm amazed by the fact that even though there's been quite a time lag since I posted the last chapter, I'm still continuing to get story alerts, and even a review here and there. I want to say 'Welcome' to SkookyD, who just finished catching up with this story and missing a lot of sleep as a result. Thanks for the reviews along the journey, SkookyD...I just love reading the new reviews on the earlier chapters when someone has just found the story. And of course, I love reading all of the reviews, no matter what the chapter, so if you've left a review recently...thanks!**_

_**One thing I want to clarify is that I'm going to try to keep to the climate of the series when I first started this fic, which was last November. So there are two big things to note: 1) Lanie and Esposito may have been having a relationship at that point, but they were still trying to keep it a secret, although people may have suspected. 2) Montgomery is still in the picture (although not in this chapter). To all of a sudden change this story to incorporate how the series has changed since then would be just...wonky. **_

_**Disclaimer: the usual. Don't own the characters, and now we're to the point where we don't even have a beach for me to want to own either. Well, at least it's summertime here now.**_

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

_Previously:_

_And now Kate was more than annoyed, especially because she was trying to hard to tell Lanie the truth, for goodness sakes. So by God, if Lanie was avoiding her, she was just going to have to get to the bottom of this a different way._

_Forgetting her coffee, she stalked back into the bullpen and right up to Esposito's desk. He looked up at her nonchalantly, and then stiffened as he saw the look on her face. Even Ryan noticed her dramatic and fear-inducing entry back into the large room, actually before Esposito did, and it was enough to make him sit up and take notice. If Ryan had had had time, he would have warned Esposito with a quick "Beckett's on the warpath" comment under his breath._

_Her lack of sleep and her lack of a recent caffeine hit added to the sternness and the no-nonsense tone in her voice. "Okay, Esposito, spill. Why is Lanie avoiding me?"_

Esposito looked up at her with the stern, icy, poker-face look that he could do so well. Or, at least he tried. Because as soon as she mentioned Lanie, and not in direct relation to the case, he lost a little bit of his calm. "Huh? Lanie? Avoiding you? Don't ask me...ask her."

"Well, Esposito, I would if she would return any of my freaking calls or texts, or if she wouldn't run away as soon as she saw me, like she just did. I don't think I've ever seen someone do an about-face back into an elevator with quite as much speed as what she did just now." She put her palms down on the desk and leaned down toward him. "So what is going on, Esposito?" she asked slowly.

Esposito looked up at her, and with an equally measured tone, he told her with a shrug, "No idea. Don't know why you'd think I'd know what's going on with her."

She stood back up and folded her arms as she gazed at him. "So is that how we're playing it now? '_I don't have any idea'_," she parrotted back to him in a deeper voice. "Nice try, Esposito, but you're not fooling anyone. I'm going back to the breakroom to get that cup of coffee that I desperately need, and you can take the time that I'm gone to tell our favorite ME that I need to talk to her." And with that, she strode purposefully out of the room.

After she left, Ryan gazed at Esposito, leaning back in his chair and drumming his fingers together with a very slight smile on his face. He just looked at Esposito, not saying a word, until the other man said "What you lookin' at, bro? Don't you got work to do?"

"Nah, this is more fun. So, aren't you going to call Lanie, warn her? Talk things over? Maybe find out where she wants to go for dinner? See if you can coordinate your shirt with her dress?" Ryan chided.

Esposito shook his head and tried to look puzzled, but he wasn't very successful, what with Beckett catching him off-guard and then Ryan giving him grief. "I think maybe you were sniffin' the same stuff that Beckett was. What is with her, anyway?" He tried to sound aloof and also tried to inject a puzzled note into his voice, but alas, he fell short on that also.

"Oh, I don't know, Esposito. She's a pretty good detective, you know. Maybe she just started putting some clues together and they added up to two-you and Lanie."

Esposito looked over at him again, trying for stern and unruffled. It wasn't working. Finally Ryan gave a little laugh and told him, "Oh, just give it up already! Come on, dude, we all _know_ there's something going on with you two. Beckett hasn't even been here the last two weeks and even _she_ can tell."

"What?" Esposito asked in one last ditch attempt to deny where this conversation was apparently headed.

Ryan cocked his head to the side and with a bored, been-there-done-that tone, simply said, "Dude."

Esposito sighed, resigned that they'd been outed and his little game of denial wasn't working. "How?"

"Please! I'm a detective. You're not as subtle as you think you are about some things. And you know, I _am_ in a relationship too. I know the signs."

"Well..."

"Dude? If I were you, and if I wanted to have a hope of getting some anytime soon, I think I'd be making that call down to your girlfriend, and tell her what Beckett said. Warn her, you know? When Beckett's like that, you definitely want a warning before she catches up with you." He started to turn away, but then turned back and added, "And we don't need Beckett to invent some excuse why we have to crawl through dumpsters just because she's pissed at you and lovergirl, now do we?" He pointed to the phone. "Make the call, bro."

Esposito did just that, but he only got Lanie's voicemail. He left a quick message and looked up just as Beckett walked back into the bullpen. It was her turn to point at the phone that Esposito was hanging up. "That call had better be to who I think it was, Esposito."

He gave a nod.

"And?" she prompted.

"Left a message."

Beckett rolled her eyes, but continued over to sit down at her desk. She took a couple of long sips of her coffee, and then opened the file. After several minutes, she looked up at the guys and said, "Get me everything you can on the girlfriend...uh, Rachel Cassidy."

Ryan took the lead. "We ran her already. She's clean. Stable. Bank records normal, no motive, obviously didn't do it because she saw it, and she really freaked out. Really. Hard to fake that."

"No, not that stuff. Did you dig any deeper?"

"Into the girlfriend? We questioned friends of the couple. They all said the same thing...stable, both nice, everyone loved them, couldn't imagine who would do this, how will Rachel go on, yadda yadda."

"Dig into her life; did she have enemies? What about her family, her past."

"What's your angle?" Esposito wanted to know.

"Just a hunch. But I'm thinking that if the vic was really that squeaky clean, then maybe it's more about her, not him. Just the way it was done, and when it was done, with the ring...you know. Like the timing was intentional."

"Got it."

Beckett got up. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go see a certain ME about an issue." And she strode purposefully out of the bullpen, but didn't forget to grab her coffee.

However, when she got downstairs, she found only Perlmutter. "Where's Dr. Parish?" she asked the other ME.

"Body dropped. Karpowski's team. I was supposed to go, but she told me to stay here, considering how things were going...or rather coming up yesterday."

Beckett inwardly cringed. Leave it to Perlmutter to give her a visual that she just did not need this morning. So it would probably be several hours before Lanie was back in the morgue. Great. Just great.

She took the elevator back upstairs and after a quick stop in the breakroom to refill her coffee, went back into the bullpen and settled at her desk. Ryan and Esposito were on the phone and were busy scribbling information down on notepads. She opened up the file again and began reading, trying to interpret everything anew, as if this was the first time she'd seen the specifics of the case.

So the morning dragged on, with only the random noise of the bullpen around her. They weren't going to see the girlfriend until the early afternoon, so they had time to kill and research to do. And after the first hour, she glanced at the chair beside her desk as she tilted her neck from side to side to try to get the kinks out. How she wished that chair was occupied by its usual person; the person who would sit there next to her and either play on his phone or offer outlandish theories that, every once in a while, weren't so outlandish after all. And as she did that, she wondered if Rick's meeting with his publisher was going any better than her search for Jonathan Hill's killer.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At that moment, Rick was sitting in a plush chair in one of the lavishly-appointed conference rooms in his publishing company's offices. He was trying to stay focused, but wasn't having too much luck as he listened to a smattering of editors drone on about his work. It was different ones doing the droning this time; each time, there seemed to be different ones. And at least one of them was always pretty, and young, and very...eager. After these meetings, he was often left wondering exactly why he had to be subjected to these people; was _he_ one of the job perks for these people? Oh, yes, he surmised as he tried to look interested in what some insipid little vamp-wannabe in a too-tight business suit was saying about character motivations and symbolism, the benefit package includes 401K, medical, dental, vacation, sick pay, expense account, and the ability to have a top-selling author be your captive audience for one morning twice a year while you drone on about mundane malarkey. At first it was nice, and it was flattering to have these attractive young things show so much interest in his work and, well, also in him. But now that he could see through what they were trying to do, it wasn't flattering anymore; it was merely annoying. If this lunch followed the blueprint of all of the other meetings like this that he'd attended over the years, he was pretty sure that the insipid young thing droning on at him now would probably be accompanying them to lunch, where he would be forced to sit next to her and not eat as she attempted to get him to agree with whatever literary point she was making. And if he wasn't mistaken, she would probably attempt some flirting somewhere in there. The flirting-and what it could and often would inevitably lead to by the end of the afternoon-used to be fun, but had certainly lost its appeal over the last several years. And there was no way that he would be even remotely interested in accompanying the current editorial flavor to the hotel suite that he suspected was waiting on standby should he choose to partake.

And to further his ESP of the forthcoming lunch, Paula would be ignoring them by checking her phone, or actually being able to eat while he was subjected to the endless litany of chatter and suck-uppiness emitted by the...hmmm...what could he call her? She needed a name, and he had no idea what it was. No, she needed an acronym. Yes, that would work. He nodded at whatever she said and smiled at her, and she beamed as she did some more controlled gesticulations toward him, some of which involved the jutting forth of her ample bosom. An acronym. Then when this one was gone and the next one was doing the same thing in several more months, he could just transfer the acronym to the new one. He was sure the acronym would still fit, even if the person-female (they were always female)-was different.

He picked up his coffee and took a sip as he realized that although she was young and pretty, she lacked any...luster for him now. Lackluster. Yeah, he liked that word. It fit. So now he needed a name that started with the letter 'L'. Lee? No, too short. Leilani? No, way too long. Although, he thought, if she droned on much longer, he was sure he would have more than enough time to match up a descriptor to all of those letters. Lydia? Hey, Lydia might work. It was short enough without being too short. Hmmm, he thought as the various editors attempted to alternately compliment him on his work and ask leading questions about other facets of his plotlines, next is a 'Y'. Well, that was easy. She was young. So we have a Lackluster Young...what? Then, as she started to talk again, he smiled absently at her again as he found the perfect word for 'D': Drone. Next was 'I'. Easy peasy. He'd already described her in his head as insipid. So...Lackluster Young...no, Lackluster Youngster Droning Insipid...insipid what? Had to be a noun. Somehow, just then he managed to focus enough on what she was saying, and he heard her call him an architect, designing the character of Nikki Heat like an architect designs a building. And then she went one step further, calling him a plumber (really, a _plumber_?) as, through his words, he hooked up the pipes that made Nikki live in the eyes of the readers, like a plumber hooked up pipes in a house to make that house livable with running water. 'Because you need water to survive,' she finished. He just nodded at her and took another sip of his coffee, wishing that it was spiked and wondering for the umpteenth time why he was being subjected to her and her bad little analogies. Then he realized that it was right there, the 'A' word that he'd been looking for...'analogies'.

He smiled into his cup as he realized that he now had all of the letters for his acronym. And then whatever-her-name-was saw him smile, and she evidently thought he was impressed with her, because she beamed back at him again and let out a dainty little laugh, which in turn had everyone else chuckling with her, although no one had any idea why they were laughing, except for Rick, of course. Good God, had he actually enjoyed this at one time?

So he had his acronym: LYDIA. Lackluster Youngster Droning Insipid Analogies. It, by far, wasn't the best he'd ever come up with, but it certainly worked for this.

After a while, he noticed that they were all putting their cups down and looking at him expectantly. Figuring that they were finally done, he smiled as he put he cup down. They all got up and proceeded to file out of the room, talking about the new restaurant they were taking him for lunch. LYDIA stayed close to him, almost like a sheepdog that was trying to herd its flock as she walked so closely that she almost kept nudging him in the correct direction with her body. Paula looked like she'd been trying to catch his eye, so he turned to the sheepdog at his elbow, almost inadvertently body-checking her as he turned because she was standing so close, and said, "Listen, LYDIA? Can you hold that thought? I need to speak with my agent about something before we leave." And not waiting for an answer, he darted over to where Paula was standing, not noticing the perplexed tone in the young woman's voice as she said softly, "But my name is Kaylee...", confusion evident on her face.

When he got to Paula, she was gazing at him between furrowed brows, and if was gauging it correctly, with not a lot of approval. "What is _with _you, Rick? Did you hear one word that anyone said in that room just now?"

"Uh...sure...I heard a word. Here and there."

"Here and there? Rick, these people are your _career_! You need to pay attention!"

"Paula, they're boring. Do I really need to listen to their chatter about my character motivations? My characters are motivated just fine. And that last one...a plumber? Give me a break! And will you please tell me how in the world it is even remotely relevant to my career that some little twenty-something who's probably on her first 'real' job thinks that I should occasionally refer to Nikki as Nicole?"

Paula fixed Rick with an exasperated glare. "It doesn't matter if you think it's relevant! It just matters that you give them what they want. Basically, these people employ you! You need to make nicey-nice with them."

"No, Paula, I don't. I need to write books, and I'll name my characters whatever I want, thank you. And _I_ employ _you_, and pay you quite well, I might add, for the express purpose of making nicey-nice with them after they bore me to tears and try to set me up with their little cutesy interns who have no clue about literature and just want to be a nice Castle bed warmer!"

"You never seemed to mind the bed warmers before, Rick," Paula told him as she arched an eyebrow at him.

"The bed warmers were fine when I was in my twenties. I'm not there anymore. I'm past that."

Paula looked around before she lowered her voice and asked, "You're past having sex? Why, Ricky, are you having any 'problems' that I should know about? You're kind of young to be having those issues, but..." she trailed off.

"God, Paula! I'm going to try to ignore the fact that it feels quite...squicky to be talking about my sex life with you. But no, I have no problems of that nature, so forget that." He spoke in a very resolute voice, even as he was thinking how Kate would get a big laugh out of Paula's question about him potentially having 'problems' in bed. She would certainly be able to attest to the world that he didn't, although he certainly didn't want to put her in the predicament of having to do that. "And do me a favor, please: don't bring up my sex life again. There is absolutely no problem there."

"Ahhh. But then what-" she was interrupted by one of the more senior members of the group, telling them that the limo was there to take them to the restaurant. He smiled a smug smile at Paula, who obviously wasn't ready to give up her line of questioning, but was forced to as he obiediently followed the other person downstairs to the limo. And as he turned the corner toward the elevator, he saw the sheepdog girl-LYDIA-swoop down on him with a big smile on her face. She stood so close to him in the elevator that he was wondering if she was going to actually try to feel him up or something. He suppressed a shudder. Paula was right behind him, so when he turned around at the back of the elevator, he arched an eyebrow at her and shot a quick glance of just his eyes down toward the not-so-subtle young woman, indicating to his agent that she should take note of the pest and do something about her. The employment comment from the prior few minutes was still ringing in her brain, so she dutifully engaged the young woman in conversation as Rick tried to ease away a bit. The plan worked, and by the time the elevator stopped, Rick had his agent as a full-body buffer between him and the sheepdog lest she try to herd him again on the way to the limo.

He just kept thinking how this was going to be a very interesting lunch. And he thought again of how much he missed Kate. _Really_ missed Kate.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At around noon, Kate took a break to stretch her legs and get a fresh cup of coffee. When she returned to her desk, she found a carton of chinese food on her desk. Looking up, she found Ryan and Esposito eating out of identical cartons, so she figured it was by way of a peace offering for the morning incident, or maybe just a 'welcome back' gesture. At any rate, it made her aware that it was time for lunch, and that she was actually hungry. As she sat down, she called out, "Guys?" When they looked over at her, she picked up the take out container and gave them a salute with it with a small smile, her way of saying thanks before she settled in to eat.

After she'd gotten about halfway through the carton, her phone chimed on the desk where it was laying, indicating a new text message. She picked up her phone to find a message from Rick. Uh, Castle. She was in the precinct; he was 'Castle' here. She read the message and smiled.

_'Off to lunch. Editor-thing thinks I should call Nikki Nicole. Didn't tell her that if I wouldn't change name for you, definitely not changing for her. And apparently I'm a plumber. Ditto. WIWT.'_

She smiled at the memory, of when she surprised him at his book reading party and his mother inadvertently spilled the beans about his new character's name, and she'd told him to change the name. Even though she didn't like the name when she heard it, and she still wasn't terribly fond of it, she had to admit that it grew on her. And even though the name wasn't her favorite, she also had to admit that she was still somewhat impressed that he didn't bow to pressure; he had a vision and he followed through, although it was highly annoying at the time.

Ditto. She knew what that meant, because she used it earlier on the phone. And she got a quick little kick of that funny feeling in her stomach, the one she'd felt so much in the last week and a half. But this was different, because it was _here_, and it was unexpected, and it was just...sweet. And it was just what she needed right now. And better yet, it was one more little tangible reminder of what she'd been worried about the last few days-that things would be different when they got home-and was also further proof that she didn't really need to worry at all...some things remained constant, and their feelings appeared to be one of those things.

But the plumber comment? No clue there, and knowing Castle, she wasn't sure she even wanted to know. But WIWT...what was that? So she quickly texted him back. _"Ditto back. But WIWT?"_

A minute later, she received the reply. _"Sorry, acronyms on the brain right now. Wish I Was There. Really. Really really. Super dooper really."_

His last comment evoked a couple of memories from their trip, and she quickly texted back, _"Not Scooper Dooper? No ice cream for lunch?"_

The return text came back. _"I wish. Paula giving me mean looks. Have to run now. Ditto."_

She put her phone down on her desk with a smile, and then happened to look up and see both Ryan and Esposito with chopsticks paused into their takeout containers, staring at her. The smile dropped from her face as reflex kicked in. "What's with you guys? You got gas or something?"

"No, no, nothin'. Just wondering what's got you all smiley all of a sudden," Esposito explained.

"Well, Esposito, I'm sure it just has to be your remarkable aptitude for ordering Chinese food," she quipped slowly.

Esposito sat back in his chair and said, "Sure. That's why you're texting fast and furiously and smiling in between bites. I just wonder," he said, turning to Ryan, "if it couldn't have anything to do with, oh, maybe a certain hypothetical guy who likes Florida beaches and going deep sea fishing? What do you think, bro?"

Ryan looked puzzled. "Nah. She couldn't be texting a hypothetical dude, now could she? Wouldn't she have to be hypothetically texting him, if he's a hypothetical dude? Which would mean that she wouldn't actually be sitting there and pushing buttons, because that's not hypothetical. That's actual. And to actually text a hypothetical dude...well, doesn't that violate some law of the space-time continuum or something?"

"Like crossing a dimensional rift?" Esposito asked, which was followed by Ryan's earnest nod. When they looked back at her, Beckett just rolled her eyes.

"Are you guys done? God, it's a good thing Castle isn't here or you all might vaporize in your collective particle beams."

Esposito gave Beckett a stern gaze. "That made no sense."

She stared him down. "Hypothetically speaking." Then she raised one eyebrow at him before taking her chinese container to the breakroom to put it in the fridge.

She stopped off in the restroom before going back to her desk, and she found Ryan and Esposito all packed up by the time she got back. They had an appointment to meet Rachel Cassidy, Jonathan Hill's girlfriend. She was hoping that her questioning of Ms. Cassidy would lead her in the right direction to find her boyfriend's killer. And she was also hoping that by the time she returned to the precinct, a certain ME would be back from her body drop and would be prepared to talk. And if not...tough. She didn't have to talk. She just had to listen. And if that certain ME tried to avoid her any more...well, forget about Lanie's standard threat, because Kate was just about ready to turn it around and smack _her_ if she tried any more of that particular brand of nonsense.

* * *

_**First, I would like to say that I have absolutely no idea what goes on in publishing meetings. I'm sure it's not how I've described...probably not even close. But this was purely for entertainment purposes (as is the whole premise of the series anyway), so if none of it is the least bit plausible, then I hope it was at least entertaining.**_

_**Now, with the name of the editorial youngster, I was trying to think of a fun, modern name that evoked an image of a cute, carefree young thing. So the name Kaylee popped into my head and I went with it. And then I remembered Firefly, and that Kaylee. So yes, there's an inadvertent Firefly reference, although it wasn't originally intended that way. Funny how that works, isn't it?**_

_**I had intended to go a little farther with this chapter, but with the way it was going (that is, NOT fast), it probably would have doubled in size if I'd done that. So this is what you get for now. I realize that it's not a very good cliffhanger ending that makes you beg and clamor for more, but I hope it doesn't suck too badly. And since I hope to never need another surgery, hopefully the updates will come faster after this. :-)**_

_**Sooo...thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts! Have a wonderful day!**_


	67. Chapter 67

_**Hi, all! So sorry that this took so long! I want to thank everyone who left those wonderful reviews for me. They truly keep me going, and keep me wanting to write this story. I know from the length of time it took for this update that it may not seem like that, but it's really true. **_

_**I'm so used to writing Castle and Beckett NOT at work that I'm finding it's somewhat of a challenge for me to write them at work. I know where I want to go with this, but the hard part is getting there. And of course I have to fill in all of the other stuff. Challenge...yeah.**_

_**Still, I hope you enjoy it. This chapter is one of the setup chapters for the conclusion, so while we're not there yet, I hope you do like it anyway. And if you don't, please at least don't leave an anonymous review...it's very frustrating (and not very constructive) to leave me a review saying you don't like something, but then leave me no way to contact you for more clarification from you or to explain my reasoning. I do love the reviews-truly-but really, if there's something not positive that you feel compelled to say, then constructive criticism is the way to go. And really, if you don't like the story and you can't manage something constructive at this point, then why in the world are you reading chapter 67? (Sorry if I sound annoyed, but I've gotten several of these lately. I don't have a problem with negative reviews, for the most part, but I want to use them as a learning experience, so negative with no explanation or no way of asking doesn't do anyone any good, because I can't improve it and you won't like it any better if I can't. KWIM?)**_

_**Amybf19, Verenouche, and especially LocoGreggo, thanks SO MUCH for your wonderful comments. And welcome to angelrescue02 and banerry! Seriously I would LOVE to see how the writers write an episode...wouldn't that just be amazing?**_

_**I try to proofread, but alas, sometimes I don't catch everything. So please forgive me if you find spelling/typo errors.**_

_**Disclaimer: As much as I might wish otherwise, I don't own any of these wonderful characters. So sad.**_

* * *

_Previously:_

_Castle had meetings with his publisher all day, which consisted of a bunch of editorial types (or wannabes) spouting nonsense at him, at least that was his impression. There was one girl who was 'assigned' to him, who latched onto him in a thinly veiled attempt to suck up to him. He knew, from past experience, that she would also be willing to provide him with more than editorial services if he so desired, which he no longer did. As a result, he couldn't wait to get away from her and even assigned her the moniker acronym of LYDIA, which meant Lackluster Youngster Droning Insipid Analogies. And they are off to lunch._

_Meanwhile, Kate still hasn't told Lanie the truth about her new relationship with Castle because she can't find her; Lanie was out of the office. So, after finding no good leads in the search for Jonathan Hill's killer, she was off to a meeting with his girlfriend._

The meeting with Rachel Cassidy was, to put it mildly, difficult. Esposito had stayed behind at the last minute to run some other information, and just Ryan went with Beckett to do the interview. It was a hard case, sure, with no answers to give the grieving woman. But to Kate, it was especially hard. Because as she talked to Rachel, she couldn't help but see the parallels with her own life. Rachel was searching for sense in something that was totally senseless, and Kate could relate. The distraught woman broke down once, and after she'd composed herself again, she got a dreamy look in her eyes as she started talking.

"We worked together, you know. Well, it wasn't work, like a job, but it was a volunteer thing. We were there several times a week. We somehow almost always had the same shifts. And he wanted to go out with me from the start, but I always said no." She paused briefly and looked down at her hands. Kate knew she was reminiscing and while it probably wasn't really pertinent to the case, she knew it was helpful to her, to have someone to talk to, so she let her continue. "I was dating someone, and then even when I broke up with him, I still didn't give Jon a chance. He was my friend, you know? I _worked_ with him...I couldn't date him!"

"What changed?" Kate prompted. "The people we talked to said that you'd been dating for a while."

"My next boyfriend turned out to be a creep. A two-timing creep. And then my grandma died. And Jon was there through everything, and he just helped me take my mind off of everything, helped me focus. And pretty soon I realized that I couldn't wait to see him. I realized I was talking to him even when we weren't doing the volunteer thing. And one night we grabbed dinner, and then he casually suggested we catch a movie, and then at the end he asked me if I'd had a good time. I told him yes, duh. We always had a good time together. Then he told me, "Hey, Rache, most people would consider this a date. So tell me again why you won't officially date me?"

She shook her head and smiled. "Hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized he was right. So I said okay, and we started 'officially' dating. And then a while ago-late last summer, I think it was-he even brought up getting married! I mean, it wasn't a proposal or anything, but just like a 'what if' type of thing. Honestly, he freaked me out. But I saw how shocked he was when I freaked out, and kind of disappointed too and then he never mentioned it again. We just kept doing our same old thing. But now I wonder..."

Kate saw the tears start to fill her eyes again, so she gave her a minute, and then Rachel looked at her and finished "I wonder if we would have been married by now. If I hadn't freaked out, I mean." Her voice held a wistful quality to it, and as she continued, she seemed to be hypothesizing, creating an alternate reality of what-ifs with her words. She was now only halfway talking to Kate; the other half of her was somewhere else, somewhere less painful than the present, than reality. "Then we would have had some time together. We might not have even been right there, meeting at that restaurant at that particular point in time. No...madman with a g-g-gun." Her voice broke on the last word, but she still continued after taking another breath. "He said we needed a fun night out, a big, fancy date, because it's been so stressful lately with all of the stuff about Joey and we hadn't been out on a real date in such a while. If we were married, we wouldn't have the need to go on real dates, right? We could have just been home...and safe."

Kate knew it was a rhetorical question, because they were both single and didn't know how married people behaved from firsthand experience. Did they go on dates? Well, there was that one movie about a married couple's date night gone wrong, but that was fiction. Did people really do that? She'd bet that Rick would. Sure, they'd have quiet nights relaxing at home, but then from time to time, she was sure that he would probably arrange some elaborate...wait! She was questioning a witness to a crime! She couldn't be distracted with her love life! God, she was being ridiculous!

She looked at Rachel, who was staring at her hands. She tried to draw on the inner strength she had to say the right thing to the grieving loved ones. "Miss Cassidy...Rachel, one thing that I've found is that things happen for a reason. If you didn't get married last fall, it was because you weren't ready then. Who knows, if you had, and it wasn't the right time, it may not have worked out. There would have always been those doubts that you were moving too fast, that you weren't ready, whatever; and they might have undermined the relationship that you were building. But the way it happened, no, you didn't get to be married, but you built your relationship into something beautiful and you'll always have those wonderful memories of him to treasure. It doesn't make it any easier to bear, and it won't bring Mr. Hill back to you. But you'll know that you were happy, and that he was happy with you, right up until his last moments."

"Have you ever lost someone you loved, Detective? I mean, like...this? Too soon?" the grieving woman asked.

"Yes," Kate said simply.

"How do you go on? How do you make yourself do anything? How do you even make yourself want to get up each morning and face people, talk to people?"

Kate thought for a moment, trying to find the right words. Not that there were ever the 'right' words, but she tried to find something to say that would offer a modicum of comfort to her. "You think about what he would want for you. He'd be happy that you loved him, and that you miss him, but he'd want you to go on, too. He wouldn't want you to stop living, just because he wasn't there to share your life anymore, would he?"

She shook her head and her mouth formed a word, though Kate could hardly hear it. "No."

"And you think about that, and you remember him, and you remember the happiness you shared. But right now, you help me. You talk to me, and try to think about anything that could be important to finding out who could have done this to him. And to you."

She nodded, and then she looked briefly down at her hands clutching a wad of tissues before looking back up at the detective. "I've been through things already with the other officers. Jon is...was...everyone liked him. I just don't...I can't think of anyone who would have done..._that_," she said, closing her eyes for a few moments, as Kate suspected she was imagining again those moments as gunfire erupted in front of her and the man she loved fell to the street, dead.

Kate let her be for a moment, and during the silence, her mind fixated on something that Rachel had said earlier, in passing. "Rachel, you mentioned earlier about being stressed, about some stuff with...Joey?" Rachel nodded. "Who is Joey? And, forgive me for asking, but what was the 'stuff' that you were stressed about?"

"Joey was my two-timing ex. I broke up with him, and then he tried to get me back. You know, I almost did go back, but it was Jonathan who talked me out of it. He told me I deserved more. He said if I couldn't trust him to be faithful to me for the three months we were dating, then how could I trust him for any more than that? But anyway, I told Joey to go away, and he did for a while, but then when he found out Jon and I were together, he started trying to get me back again. He'd show up places where Jon and I were. He just seemed to be...around. A lot more. It was never anything really blatant, or often enough, so I couldn't get a restraining order. But it still freaked me out a little even though Jon said he was just messing with me. Joey told me a few times that we belonged together, that he changed...all of that. But I was with Jon. Joey and I were done."

Red warning lights were going off in Kate's brain. She tried to remain calm when she asked, "What is Joey's last name?"

"Cavalini. Joey-Joseph Cavalini," Rachel answered automatically, but then her eyes widened and she asked hurriedly, "Oh, my God, you don't think Joey had something to do with what happened, do you?"

Even though Kate knew that Rachel's mind was going into blame mode, she was still honest with her, although she tried to be gentle. "Right now, we're trying to explore every lead. And frankly, Mr. Hill seemed to be a very likeable guy and we haven't found very much so far. Sometimes, unfortunately, the key isn't with the victim, but with someone close to the victim. So that's why I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh, God," Rachel said again. "Will you let me know?"

"Of course."

Kate gave her condolences again, and walked out to her car. Although Ryan had come with her on the interview, he'd stayed quiet as a mouse during the exchange, just observing, knowing when Beckett had everything under control. And the combination of empathy and her sharp mind had uncovered a potential lead, one that he wasn't entirely sure he, himself, would have picked up on, or would have been able to draw out of their witness. But Beckett, she'd just gotten the victim talking, and that was all that was needed.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

On the way back, they'd called Esposito to have him run a check on Joseph Cavalini. By the time they got back to the precinct, they had a brief history on Mr. Cavalini, and his history ended up making him a very viable suspect. They reviewed the information, and then Ryan, this time with Esposito, turned right around and left to bring him in for questioning, while Kate stayed at the precinct this time. Although the lead was viable, she still wanted to see if there was anything else that jumped out at her, so she got out the case file to review once again. She started with Lanie's autopsy report, and with the photos of the crime scene, the evidence and the body. She came across the picture of the smiling Jonathan Hill again, and thought the same thoughts that she always did-of the senseless waste of the crime and of her compulsion to find justice.

And when she was flipping through the pictures, she came to the evidence photo of the ring that Jonathan Hill had bought for Rachel Cassidy. After talking to the woman, she knew what Rachel's answer would have been, and that if not for a deranged gunman, that ring would be on Rachel's hand right now and she'd probably be happily showing it off and still getting used to the weight of it on her finger. And Detective Beckett then did something that she just about never did when she was in 'work mode'; she daydreamed, just for a couple of seconds. She glanced for a moment at her own empty left ring finger, and she thought of the ring that waited for her at home; the ring, and of course the man, that were waiting for her to decide the right time to start wearing it.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Across town, while Beckett was questioning Rachel Cassidy, Castle was having a very different experience at lunch at a sufficiently posh, upscale restaurant with the sheepdog girl, LYDIA. Simply put, he was trying to stay sane until he could see Kate that evening. As he predicted, LYDIA was seated next to him, and there was absolutely no hesitation on her part from peppering him with inane questions or comments. And if he would turn his attention to anything else, even his lunch, not two minutes would go by before he felt her touch his sleeve and try to garner his attention once again. He wasn't sure if it was due to his relationship with Kate or not, but this girl seemed to be much more persistent and annoying than they normally were.

At one point, when he was desperate for a few bites of his lunch, he used the last resort of bad manners to try to put her off for a bit. He saw an opening when LYDIA took a sip of her water and the monologue, blessedly, stopped for a moment. He used the opening to take a large bite of his food, and of course, LYDIA was apparently revived enough by the sip of water because she started back in with questions immediately after setting her glass back down on the table. But Castle was fed up by that point, and he was hungry. So Rick turned to her, smiled, and said "Whawazzat?", leaving his mouth open a little bit even though he still had food inside. She wasn't able to mask the brief look of horror at the absence of good table manners before the smile returned to her face. But at least the episode had some of the desired effect when, after the smile, she quickly turned back to her own ignored dinner and began eating, obviously very willing to leave Castle alone for the time being, rather than be subjected to viewing the contents of his mouth once again.

Rick noticed Paula giving him the evil eye for his etiquette gaffe, but at this point, he didn't care. He just wanted to eat, and get the hell out of there and away from the clingy young thing that was apparently assigned to suck up to him. Maybe if he could get out of there soon enough, he could even stop by the precinct for a few hours. Just the thought of stopping by the precinct made a smile threaten to appear on his face, but he squashed down the urge. He didn't want LYDIA to see him smile, because she would probably start beaming again, followed by her spouting more insipid nonsense at him. If he had to hear one more time that she thought that it would really 'flesh out the character' to start referring to her as Nicole, he seriously thought he would start pulling his hair out.

He finished the rest of his meal and politely smiled and nodded at the brief snippets of polite conversation that were attempted by the other members of the table from time to time. Somehow, he managed to even eat his entire meal, and when he thought about it, he was surprised that something as simple as feigning being etiquettely-challenged would be the thing that would give him a LYDIA reprieve.

But when he stood up to 'stretch his legs', as he euphemistically called it when he excused himself from the table, he was chagrinned to find that LYDIA was right behind him, jumping up so fast that he was amazed that her chair didn't fall down behind her from the force. He was so tempted to give her a Beckett eye-roll, but refrained and instead motioned for her to sit down, while telling her in a somewhat exasperated tone, "No, just sit, and stay." As he said it, he realized that despite the fact that he'd likened her to a sheepdog in his own musings, now he was really_ talking _to her like one would talk to a dog. "Stay there," he amended more politely, "no need to get up. I don't think you could accompany me to the men's room anyway." Her mouth dropped open and she looked down at the table briefly, and then said "Oh, excuse me," as he walked away, leaving her looking appropriately embarrassed at trying to follow him. He didn't really want to embarrass her, but really, enough was enough and the girl just needed to simmer down in her unbridled hovering.

He tried to take as much time as he could away from the table; he needed the respite before going back. Now that his meal was finished, he would be forced to be a captive audience while they all sat around and schmoozed over coffee. He was sorely tempted to just walk out a back entrance, but he knew this wouldn't be the end of it, and Paula and the powers-that-be would just start harassing him again, and then all that he'd sat through already would be for naught. He washed his hands for so long that he was sure they'd be sterile enough to perform surgery. When he could delay no more, he exited the opulent restroom. He took a deep breath and proceeded out into the main dining room. But before he could make it back to his table, he heard some raised voices coming from a table that he'd have to pass on the way back to his own. There was a man standing side of a table, pointing angrily at a woman seated there, and he could hear a few off-color words as he was almost yelling at the woman. She looked wildly uncomfortable and even a touch frightened, and the man seated next to her at the table looked dumbfounded. The actions of the angry man were in direct contrast to the elegant atmosphere of the restaurant, with its muted classical music and the lush table settings. And the actions of the angry man were getting angrier by the second, and he was starting to attract attention from the other tables.

Because he had to go right past the uncomfortable scene, Rick wondered what he could do to help diffuse the situation. Sometimes just the presence of a third party worked wonders. But as he neared the table, somewhere in the back of his mind he heard a voice, one that sounded suspiciously like Kate's, order him, "Just stay out of it, Castle." And then, "Not your concern, Castle." But when did he ever listen to Kate when she told him to stay out of something anyway, even when she was there in person? And he was sure he could help; all he had to do was turn on some charm and provide a little distraction. What was the harm in that?

So he walked up to the table in question and plastered his publicity smile on his face, sticking out his hand to the angry man for a handshake. "Rick Castle," he said cheerily. "And you are?"

The man turned slowly to look at Castle, astonishment evident in his face at this man who was interrupting his conversation. "Pissed off," he answered in response to Castle's question.

"I see that. Anything I can help with? I mean, the lady doesn't look terribly comfortable with how things are going, so..."

"Oh sure!" the man spat back at him, and when he did, the author could smell the alcohol on the angry man's breath. The man was obviously drunk, and from the looks of it, he wasn't a happy drunk. "Defend her! She's the one sneaking around, but does anyone give a rat's ass? No!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Rick could see the restaurant management slowly converging on the table, although trying to do so in an elegant, low-key fashion so as not to create a further spectacle. He also briefly caught a glimpse of the occupants of his own table, staring at him as if he was insane for trying to talk to the man. So he tuned them out and leaned a little closer to the angry man, telling him in a hushed voice, "Listen, whatever your beef is with her, this isn't the time or place. You're about to be kicked out of here, and they could even press charges for trespassing or something, so you should probably just leave quietly, okay?"

The angry man regarded him for a moment before replying, "Leave quietly? Just because Mr. Rich Boy suggests it? Forget it. So why don't you and your rich boy attitude just get the fuck away from me, okay?" Then he paused and looked briefly from Rick, to the man sitting down, and then back to Rick. "Oh, I get it! You're with him!" He gestured to the man sitting at the table. "What are you, his backup? Do you stand guard while he's screwing someone else's _wife_?" He nodded toward the man sitting down, and then glared back at Rick. And when his eyes locked with Rick's again, Rick got a very vibrant sense of foreboding.

Unfortunately for Rick, that sense of foreboding wasn't soon enough for him to avoid the fist that swung out to connect with the side of his face by his left eye, spinning him like a top and making him lose his balance. And somewhere amidst the shocked gasps and muffled screams of the other restaurant patrons, Rick lost his balance from the force of the blow and fell, with the back of his head connecting with the edge of the table on his way down. And he never felt his body fall to the floor as the world faded to black, while the surprised murmurs of the other patrons of the restaurant gave way to shocked screams.

_**That's it for now. I hope-really-to have the next chapter up a lot sooner than this last one. I know they didn't get back together yet, but like I said, this is setting the stage for the later chapters. And at least it's more than 1000 words. ;-)**_

_**You've read, now review. Please? Thanks!**_


	68. Chapter 68

_**Oh, my goodness. This chapter just kept going. And going. And going. It didn't want to end, and I had to make it end. And I'm sure there are at least a few hundred people out there who want to harm or maim me for taking so long to update this. But hey, at least it's a longer chapter, right?**_

_**I'm still amazed that people are story alerting this fic. Now I'm up to over 600! Wowsers! **_

_**Anyway, I shall mention that I don't own Castle or anything to do with it, and now, without further ado, here's chapter 68...**_

* * *

It should really have been more difficult. Esposito and Ryan had left to bring in Joseph Cavalini, and then, not twenty minutes later, one of the beat cops had brought an older nervous-looking couple to her, accompanied by another woman. The couple was Russian, and they were tourists, visiting the woman's sister, who had moved to New York years before with her children. The couple was from a small, rural town and they were thoroughly amazed by the city, so they'd taken to filming different city scenes-just random sights-so they could take the videos home and show their friends the hustle and bustle of the American city that was like no other.

And their filming had inadvertently caught the murder of Jonathan Hill.

It was strange how they didn't think much about it at the time. They knew that movies were filmed in New York, and somehow, they thought that what they'd witnessed was from a movie scene. They were so thrilled to have been able to see an American movie being filmed, and they kept talking about it. How lucky they were! So several days went by, and finally the sister just had to see the scene from the movie that they had witnessed, after hearing so much about it. Who knew...maybe she would see that good looking Brad Pitt; her sister did say that the one man did look a little like him. So the couple was watching the tapes with the sister, and when the sister saw the footage, she was horrified. The Russian tourist was so excited to show off the 'movie'-until her sister pointed out that it was no movie; it was real. There were no cameramen, there was no camera. There was no crew or other equipment. The poor couple was so embarrassed-how could they not have realized it?-but they just hadn't thought about it at the time; in retrospect, they were already awed by the city and they'd never seen anything like that before, and maybe it was more of a defense mechanism to just say to themselves that it wasn't real. After all, how could something so awful be real? How could they have witnessed that? So they just convinced themselves that it must be one of those exciting American movies.

But the sister knew otherwise, and insisted that they come to the station, where they found themselves now. Beckett took them into an interrogation room and had a TV brought in. She was able to speak to them well enough in their native tongue. Though she dealt with murders every day, it wasn't often that she actually witnessed one. After she hooked the camera up to the TV she watched the scene, and it unfolded pretty much as Rachel Cassidy said it had. There was a street performer and the camera was trained on him, but the angle was wide enough so they could see everything clearly. The couple was facing Jonathan Hill as he walked down the sidewalk and talked to Rachel on the phone. They could see the gunman get out of the passenger side of a car, walk toward Jonathan, and then hold the gun out and shoot him. The sight of it made everyone in the room take a quick gasp of air, even though everyone knew what was coming. The gunman turned around then and walked cooly back toward the waiting car, through a small crowd of people, as Rachel screamed as she saw Jonathan fall and raced to his side. And even though he was lost in the crowd of people for several seconds, there was one moment, right after he turned, when his face could be clearly seen and they could also make out that he was slipping the gun under his jacket. After watching the video, Beckett reversed the image to that moment and froze it. And she found that, despite the baseball cap he was wearing, the man looked remarkably like the DMV photo of Joey Cavalini. And he was _grinning_ as he walked back to the car.

Slam dunk.

And seeing that, Beckett knew that Joey Cavalini had a date with a needle in his now-limited future.

Detective Beckett thanked the couple, and the sister, and after getting statements and giving them a promise to get their camera back to them as soon as possible, walked them to the elevator. All three of them still looked somewhat shell-shocked by the turn of events. Turning the video in to the police had made the whole experience more real for them, and the women had tears in their eyes, while the man had his lips set in a grim line.

After the visitors were gone, Beckett placed a call to one of the Assistant District Attorneys that she dealt with often. She knew he would hear about it soon enough, but she wanted to give him a heads-up because she figured that this case would soon be getting a good deal of media attention.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Castle felt a hand in his, holding onto it and rubbing the back of it. He heard voices, and one of them souded suspiciously like his agent. Paula? What was she doing here? When did she come to Florida? Did he fall asleep on the beach? Where was Kate? And why the hell was someone pulling his eye open and shining a light into it? Damn, that was bright! He grimaced at the light and tried to turn his head away, but it wouldn't move very well, like there was something around his neck, and then a pain shot through the back of his head anyway at the movement. "Argh..." he uttered as he tried to squeeze his eyes shut.

"He's coming back," someone said. "That's a good sign. Mr. Castle, are you awake? Can you hear me?" He felt a light shake on his shoulder.

"Ugh...yes...how can I _not_ hear you when you're shouting at me?"

The light seemed so bright through his eyelids. Well, the right one anyway. His left eye felt a little strange. He must have fallen asleep. And he had an awful dream about one of those publisher meetings, and there was a young little thing that kept hovering over him; wouldn't leave him alone. She was really annoying and all he could think about was how quickly he could get away from her. Maybe that was why he thought he heard Paula...because of that dream; she was generally at all of the publisher meetings. Sure, that was it. She wasn't in Florida. Just Kate was here.

But the voice that was shouting at him to wake up...who did that voice belong to?

After that thought, he felt a hand touch his hair gently. Ah, Kate. He wanted to see her, so he opened his eyes to look at her beautiful face. But when his opened eyes focused on the face in front of him, he saw not beautiful dark flowing hair, but a short blond sassy bob on the face from his awful dream as she bent down close to him and ran her hand over his hair.

"Ahhhh!" he shouted in shock as he tried to shrink back away from her touch and move himself out of her way. He yanked his hand out of hers and tried to get rid of her hand on his hair also, like someone would wave his hand around trying to get rid of a pesky fly. Some other men in blue uniforms held him back down, but Rick just continued, "No, no. Get her away!" He was relieved when his words made the EMT look at the girl and tell her to please step back. He didn't notice the pitiful look on her face when she stepped out of the way.

He tried to turn his head to look around but it just didn't want to turn very easily, and he couldn't quite figure it out. The confusion must have shown on his face because the EMT then told him, "Don't try to turn your head, Mr. Castle. You're wearing a cervical collar as a precaution. According to the witnesses, your head hit the table pretty hard and we want to make sure we keep your spine stabilized until we can get you to the hospital and check you out."

"My head? Hospital?" he asked, still trying to figure out why his nightmare of that girl had come true and why he wasn't still in Florida with Kate.

"Mr. Castle, you're at a restaurant called Eight O'Clock. Can you tell me what else you remember?"

At the mention of the restaurant, pieces of his day began to flash in his brain. Waking up tired because he'd wanted Kate with him. Going to the meeting with his publisher instead of going into the precinct. And he groaned when he remembered the girl-LYDIA-hanging on his every word and being annoyingly attentive. He went to the bathroom to try to escape her for a few minutes, and on his way back to the table, he saw the couple arguing, and he thought he might be able to help break it up before it got out of hand..."That man...he was angry...he was going to make a scene and I wanted to try to stop it. What happened?"

"From the looks of it, Mr. Castle, he punched you out. You have the beginnings of a nice shiner. You'll probably be able to go by the name of 'Rocky' for a little while. And then, according to pretty much everyone else here that saw it, uh..." the EMT looked a little bit unsure of how to put it.

He tried to focus on the EMT despite the fact that his head was throbbing so much that it seemed as thought there was a little person inside his head that was beating on the inside of his skull with a sledgehammer, trying to escape. "Why am I laying here? You said my head hit the table? When did it hit the table? Why did it hit the table? What table?" After his barrage of questions, he closed his eyes, willing the throbbing to subside. But it seemed that for once, his will wasn't enough, because it didn't subside. In fact, it seemed to even get a bit worse, probably because he was concentrating on it.

Another voice, not the EMT's, permeated his consciousness then, as he felt a presence bending down next to him. "What he's trying to say, you schmuck, is that you stuck your nose into someone else's business, and the guy clocked you," Paula told him. "And then you did a quite comical little spin, during which you lost your balance and hit your head on their table, and then you dropped to the floor like a lead weight." She leaned down toward him and said more softly, "Really, Rick, if you'd wanted to get out of the meeting, you could have just asked, rather than almost give poor Kaylee a heart attack like that."

He could hardly think, given the pounding in his head. Paula's words made a bit of sense, but then she totally lost him with the last part. "Glad I was able to provide some amusement for you, Paula," he said sarcastically, but softly so as to not hurt his head anymore, or be overheard. "And if you'll recall, I _did_ tell you I didn't want to continue the meeting. I was only over by that table because I had to get away from LYDIA for a little while before she drove me completely nuts."

At his last proclamation, Paula got a puzzled look on her face, like she was worrying about his mental health. And then Rick realized the last part of what Paula had said, so when they spoke next, they both spoke at the same time, confusion evident in their voices.

"Who's Kaylee?" Rick asked.

"Who's LYDIA?" Paula wanted to know.

But neither got to answer, because then the EMT said that they really needed to remove him from the restaurant to get him to the hospital. He appeared to be lucid to the EMT, but they needed to get him checked out. With a last order for Paula before they left, he told her, "Do _NOT_ call my mother or Alexis...or Kate. I will take care of it. Or so help me, Paula, I will fire you." He looked at the EMT. "Did you hear that? You're my witness. If she calls any of them, she's fired. Got it?"

The poor EMT looked like he didn't know what to say, nor did he want to get into what sounded like it could be some sort of an odd employment dispute. "Uh...sure. You can have the hospital notify whoever you want." And they began to load him onto a stretcher to take him to the ambulance, which had gone around to a private back entrance. The covert maneuver was at Paula's request, but was one that the manager of the upscale restaurant was more than happy to honor; he certainly didn't want to taint his restaurant's reputation any more by having an ambulance with flashing lights parked in front of it.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After the interrogation with Joey Cavalini, when he was on his way to a cell to await being charged with first degree murder, Beckett sat down heavily at her desk, thinking again about how it really should have been more difficult.

Joey Cavalini wasn't the brightest bulb. When shown a picture of Jonathan Hill, he did little to hide his contempt. He merely shrugged his shoulders when told that Jonathan was murdered. When asked if he owned or had access to a firearm, he looked smug. When asked about Rachel, he looked confident as he identified her as his girlfriend.

Beckett raised an eyebrow at him. "Really, Mr. Cavalini? How could she be your girlfriend when she was pretty serious with Mr. Hill? I spoke to her this afternoon, just a few hours ago, and she only mentioned you as an ex. As in, _history,_ Mr. Cavalini; gone, kaput, in the past. Done. Finished. And you know what else? She even told me that you were getting kind of creepy, like stalker type of creepy. So tell me again, Mr. Cavalini, how could she be _your_ girlfriend?"

He started to get mad, and she could see his eyes glaze over just a bit when she made the 'creepy' comment-but that was her intent. She wanted to rattle him a little, and oh, he was an easy one to rattle. So Joey just kept talking because he had an overinflated view of himself, and as he kept talking, he painted a wonderful picture of how he was just waiting for Rachel to be done with 'that guy' so she could come back to good old Joey, so he could make his move again. And as she listened to him almost hang himself with his self importance, she could almost hear Castle as if he was sitting there next to her, saying, "Motive..." in a stage whisper.

She kept on with the insults of how Rachel was over him, how she was with Jonathan, how she was happy now. Finally, he broke when he mentioned that there was no way he would stand by while she married 'that loser'. _Married. He said married._ Aha. So he knew about the ring. When pressed by Beckett, he acknowledged that he'd somehow 'heard' that Jonathan Hill had purchased an engagement ring for Rachel. But he steadfastly denied killing him. And he provided some lame alibi about being in a dark movie theater, alone

That is, until Beckett cued up the video from the Russian tourist couple. And she watched as Joey started sputtering as he realized what he was looking at, and she stopped it at the exact scene she had earlier, when he was turning around immediately after the shooting, when he had the small grin on his face. Then she said confidently, "You know, Joey, something about that scene just doesn't look like a movie theater to me. So where did you say you were that afternoon? Or are you going to try to lie to me again, Joey? Huh? Because you know, I don't really like liars. And I really don't like jealous guys who murder their ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend, just because they can't take rejection."

He was still staring at the TV screen, staring at the image of himself. "Where'd you get that?"

"Doesn't really matter, Joey, now does it? I have it, and the DA is going to see it, and the jury is going to see it, and they're all going to know what you did. Because it's all right there. So are you going to tell me what happened, or are you gonna try to tell me a story about you having an evil twin brother or something?"

And Joey Cavalini put his face in his hands and didn't say a word; he just sat there in the interrogation room, silent, hiding, like this whole thing would all vanish like a dream if he just hid long enough.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Ryan and Esposito watched from the interrogation room after Beckett took charge of the very cocky Joey Cavalini, and they were once again impressed as she slowly and systematically reduced the suspect to someone that was the polar opposite of the one who'd walked ino the room; this version of Joey was now silent and sullen. And he was also now quite _arrested_.

Esposito and Ryan had just given each other high-fives when Esposito felt the buzz of his cell phone in his pocket. He answered the phone with a puzzled look, and after a series of halting "Yeah" and "okay" responses, put the phone back in his pocket and started toward the door.

Ryan asked, "Where're you goin', bro?"

Esposito turned around. "To...never mind. I gotta check this out first. I'll call you."

"What should I tell Beckett?"

"Just tell her it's an emergency."

"Huh?"

"Dude, I gotta go. I'll call you."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Beckett came out of the interrogation room 30 minutes later. It was a long 30 minutes, and most if it was spent trying to get Joey Cavalini back from his sullen and defeated state to answer questions with more substance than monosyllabic grunts. Finally a public defender arrived for him, even though he had declined representation initially, and she was able to leave them to converse. She knew it would be a while, so she got a cup of coffee and decided to go down to see Lanie; she still needed to come clean about Dave and her new but very real relationship with Castle.

But when she got down to the morgue, she found that once again she was too late. The tech told her that Lanie had just finished posting Karpowski's homicide from earlier, and was starting on the paperwork when she received a call and had all but run out of the morgue. She yelled to the tech that she had an emergency, and had grabbed her coat and then she was gone.

An emergency? Leaving work in a hurry? Kate's previous annoyance over Lanie avoiding her vanished as she evaporated in concern for her friend. So Kate, worried about what type of emergency had happened to make Lanie run out of work so quickly, pulled out her phone to text her friend.

_"Just came to see you. Tech said you had an emergency? Can I help?"_

And by the time Kate was finished texting her, the elevator was there and she hit 'send' as she climbed into the car to ride back up to her floor.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Esposito had met Lanie in the parking garage, and they were both heading to the hospital, per Castle's instructions. If they could be called instructions; there was definitely something weird about Castle. But when the man called him and told him he was in the hospital, told him to grab Lanie and get over there, and NOT to tell Kate under any circumstances, he wasn't going to argue. The case was all but solved, and Esposito knew Ryan could cover for him with Beckett. So he was trying to navigate the traffic as Lanie tried to get more information out of him. "So he actually called you? What did he say? How did he get hurt? If he called you, he can't be hurt that badly, right? How did he sound? What-"

"Geez, will you let me answer one question before you fire twenty more at me?"

"I don't hear you answerin' any!"

"I _am_ trying to drive, you know! But he didn't say much. And he hardly even sounded like Castle. I mean, he did, but he sounded...I don't know...out of it?"

"Was he drunk? God, he didn't get naked and do something like when he stole that police horse, did he?"

"I don't know. He just said he was at the hospital and we should meet him in the ER. And he didn't want Beckett to know. 'Do NOT tell Kate', he said...he was very particular about that. Well, as much as an 'out of it' Castle can be, I guess."

"Kate? He said Kate? Not Beckett?"

"Yeah. He called her Kate. And he wasn't making a whole lot of sense. But the call was really quick so he didn't say much except for some gibberish and for us both to come to the hospital."

They were silent for a few minutes, and then Lanie grabbed her phone and groaned when she saw the message. "What's wrong?" Esposito asked her.

"It seems that Kate tried to see me to pump me for information about us again. I probably just missed her. George must have told her I had an emergency. She wants to know if she can help! God, what am I supposed to say if I'm not supposed to tell her about Castle?"

"I don't know! Just text her you can't talk now and you'll call her later."

For lack of a better idea, Lanie did that as Esposito pulled into the emergency room parking lot. They were both out of the car and running in, and within minutes were being shown to a curtained-off area. When they caught sight of Castle, Esposito said "Dude..." and Lanie let out a startled gasp before she slipped back into her no-nonsense Lanie persona.

"Richard Castle, what the hell did you go and do to yourself this time?" She folded her arms over her chest and gave him a glare, taking in the bruised face and the swelling around his left eye. And then, a split second before he spoke, she noticed the somewhat glazed look of his uninjured eye. And when he spoke, the glazed look in his eye made sense.

"Lanieeeeee! Hiiiiii! An' 'Spozzzzzzito. Hey! Than's for comin'! I jus din wanna call 'Lexis or my mother, you know? Gee, you two look cute together," he finished with a sappy grin.

Lanie ignored the comment and narrowed her eyes at him. "Castle, I repeat: What the hell did you do? And are you drunk?"

He smiled sweetly at the couple. "I din do nothin! Well, thas not all true. I juss tried to help but the guy punched me out! Can you b'lieve it? An' no, I'm not drunk. But man, this stuff is gooood!"

"Dude, who punched you out?" Esposito asked.

"Jerk. Angry jerk." And then with a weird smile that indicated he was feeling no pain, he continued, "Angry jerk with a really awesome right hook! I mean, he totally took me out!" He sounded almost strangely excited at the last part.

Just then, a doctor came into the cubicle. "Friends of Mr. Castle?" He asked the pair and they nodded.

"Tell 'em what's goin' on, doc. For some reason, they don't seem to be understandin' what I'm trying to tell 'em. You can talk to them. They're cool."

The doctor continued in a bland voice. "Mr. Castle was having lunch at a restaurant when he was struck by an irate patron when he apparently tried to intervene in an argument. The patron struck Mr. Castle and as he fell, he hit his head on a table and was knocked unconscious for a time." The doctor paused and Lanie bent over Castle to look more closely at his swollen eye. "We brought him here to perform some tests to make sure that there wasn't any damage to his skull or his spine from him hitting the table. And I'm pleased to say that the tests have come back negative. He'll be fine, but he's going to have a whopper of a headache when the happy drugs we gave him wear off. We gave him a little something for the pain and so he would be complacent for the tests. That shiner on his face will be a little tender, as will the lump on the back of his head where he connected with the table."

"So he's fine?" Esposito asked.

"Yes, although he'll be a little out of it for a few hours. And then someone should stay with him for the night, just to make sure that he doesn't develop any more symptoms, like nausea, vomiting, or unconsciousness. He can go home in another hour or two, depending on how he's feeling."

"Uh...okay," Esposito said, not really sure why Castle called him and not his mother. The woman did, after all, live with him, and she could certainly check on him if needed.

Before the doctor left, he cautioned Esposito softly, "Be aware that because of the drugs, he may be more...forthright and honest than he normally would be. So if he says anything insulting or brutally honest, as people often do, don't hold it against him, okay? Some pretty strange things could come out of his mouth. He may not even remember a lot of this."

After the doctor walked out of the cubicle, Castle crooked his finger at them in a dramatic fashion, indicating for them to come closer, like it was some big secret. "Hey, guys? Don' tell Kate. She might shoot me. And then she'll jus worry, ya know? An' I love her, ya know?" And after he said that, another sappy grin lit his face. "Well, of course you know! So you know I don' want her to worry. You know? But you guys know everything now, so I know you're good. An' I can count on you to keep things cool. But she can take care of me tonight, so you don' havta worry about that. You know she'll take good care of me."

At his proclamation of love for their friend and boss, not to mention the multiple occurrences of the word 'know', Lanie and Esposito shared a deer-in-the-headlights look that said "what the hell?" Everyone always thought that Castle had a thing for Beckett, and now, despite his protestations of being perfectly fine with Beckett's new boyfriend during the Florida phone calls, Esposito could see that the new boyfriend did apparently bother Castle more than he'd been letting on when he was in a sober, non-drug-induced state. And now, when he _was_ in the drug-induced state, it was apparent that some other latent thoughts came out. Then after their look at each other, they turned their attention back to Castle.

Esposito was treading lightly. "So, Castle, how do you think she can take care of you if you don't want her to...uh...know about this?" He saw Lanie shoot him a look, probably over using the word 'know' yet again.

"Ah, she'll see me because she's staying over. At my loft. She said she would," he said with an exaggerated wink. "But I know she has a case...or something now. She has a lot of cases, you know?" he asked rhetorically. "She's really smart and everythin'. That's why I love her. She's really smart," he repeated. Now the doctor side of Lanie was getting worried, because he seemed to be hallucinating. Admitting that he loved Kate was one thing especially with the drugs they'd given him, but to think that she was staying at his loft tonight? Well, that was just fantasy. So she tried to redirect him gently.

"What about Dave, Castle? Maybe she'll want to stay with Dave. Maybe she had plans with Dave," Lanie asked, knowing about the ring

"Nah. I love her more than Dave. Dave is a good guy. Did I tell you that he gave me Universal Dominnnn...dominAtion?" He stuttered over the multi-syllable words.

"Yeah, Castle. I even played it yesterday," Esposito reminded him, consciously speaking more slowly because he wasn't sure if Castle could handle decyphering normal speech patterns in his current state.

"Oh, yeah! That's riiiiiight!" he said exaggeratedly.

Lanie caught Esposito's eye and motioned him out of the room. They told Mr. HappyCastle that they were going out to get a drink of water, and he just gave them an A-OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. And as they left, they saw that once he caught sight of his own hand after making the sign, he'd become enthralled with it, and was waving his fingers around in front of his face, looking at it as if he'd never seen it before.

When they were outside the room, Esposito said, "Man, I wouldn't mind some of whatever they gave him."

"That boy's flying higher than the space shuttle! What are we gonna do with him? He's supposed to go to Beckett's little party tonight, to meet her new man. Well, he's met him already, but he's still supposed to be there. God, he can't go like this! What if he blurts out his undying love for her in front of this Dave? That would be just the thing for a new relationship! I don't want him to ruin Kate's big night when we meet this new guy she's so excited about."

"Maybe we can keep him away?" Esposito suggested. "Just take him home and let him sleep it off?"

"But what if he wants to go?"

"Let's just not talk about it. Maybe he'll forget that we were all supposed to meet Dave tonight. And what does it matter anyway? He's already met the guy; he doesn't need to be there."

Lanie thought about it, and then nodded. "He may just forget about it. Tell him you want to take him home so you can play Madden or something."

"I could tell him I want to play Universal Domination again!"

Lanie responded to that by whacking Esposito on his arm. "You can't say that! That game was given to him by Dave, as he just recently pointed out to us! You mention the game, he starts thinking about Dave. He starts thinking about Dave, then he remembers the meet at the Old Haunt. He remembers that, he remembers Kate, and then he's telling the whole bar that he '_jus loves her, you know?'_" she finished, doing a drugged Castle imitation at the end.

"Fine. It's Madden then. Can you be all cheery and distract him if he starts talking about Beckett?"

"Of course! I'm just a cheery person," she said through clenched teeth as she gave him a smile that he knew was forced and fake (and just a little bit scary if you knew Lanie), but would have fooled most other unsuspecting people.

They went back into the room and as they went into the curtained-off area where Castle was laying, they heard him just finishing up a phone call. They looked at each other again, wondering who he could have possibly been talking to. "So, Castle," Lanie said sweetly, "who were you talking to?"

"Oh, that was Kate. I mean Beckett. I need to call her Beckett when she's at work, you know?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "But I'm s'posed to have my phone off in here, so don' tell anyone, okay?"

"Okay, Castle," Esposito said.

Then Castle continued. "She just told me that we're gonna meet Dave at the Old Haunt at seven. I mean, you still wanna meet him, riiiiiight? He's still a really good guy, even if Kate's all mine now. Oops. I mean Beckett. She's still at work. But I got off the phone reallllllly quick an' I dint tell her anythin' about me bein' here, or about you two bein' here. It's still a seeeecret."

Esposito and Lanie shared yet another look, one that said that their plan to take him home and distract him had just gone up in smoke. Even though he was pretty loopy and was evidently imagining things about the extent of his and Beckett's relationship, apparently he had no problems with his memory and making him 'forget' about going to the Old Haunt tonight was going to be pretty difficult.

And handling things so that Castle didn't really embarrass himself at the bar tonight or make Beckett want to kill him? Given Castle's current state, Esposito was thinking that he'd have his work cut out for him.

* * *

_**Well, I hope that's not too cliffhangery for you (is that a word? Probably not, but whatever.). In case you missed it, Castle thinks that by now, Kate has told Lanie the truth b/c he hasn't talked to her except for the quick phone call at the end, and he didn't mention them. So he admits that he loves her, but they think he's hallucinating and/or letting his hidden feelings out b/c of the drugs and they want to try to spare Kate by keeping him away from her and her 'new man' so he doesn't do something uncomfortable.**_

_**Confused yet? Yup, me too. I think.**_

_**I hope it's okay. I kind of wanted to read through it once more, but I just had to post it now to avoid making everyone wait any longer. So I apologize for mistakes or typos or general weird stuff. If there's a lot, I can try to correct it all later.**_

_**And I'd very much appreciate reviews to let me know what you thought of the latest happenings in Plan-land. Hope you enjoyed it!**_


	69. Chapter 69

_**Wow again! Thank you for all of the wonderful reviews! I'm glad you liked HappyCastle...I did too. And yes, I had planned to expand on the telephone conversation even before people started asking about it.**_

_**MysteryWriter915, Katherine Temperance, Pearlofsackville...welcome, and I'm glad you're enjoying the story! (And Pearlofsackville, I had to LOL when I read your review...specifically the typo for my screen name. Pretty funny!)**_

_**Emma, as usual, wonderful words...thank you. And to SkookyD, Castlefan83, MHoles, Verenouche, AliasCSINYFriendsER and everyone else who got a good laugh out of the chapter, you've made me happy. I aimed for slightly amusing, but it seems that I exceeded that, so I'm very happy that I did, and also very appreciative that you let me know that I did. :)**_

_**This chapter isn't as long as the last one, but it's also not been nearly as long since the last update, so hopefully the bad will be canceled out by the good. And I put some more HappyCastle in here, so I hope he's still at least somewhat amusing.**_

_**Disclaimer: Nope, don't own anyone. But that would just be so cool if I did. I could watch tapings, and go on location, and check out Martha's wild wardrobe closet too (saw a pic on twitter once...wow!).**_

* * *

_Previously: Kate found Jonathan Hill's (alleged) killer via a videotape that some tourists happened to be shooting. While questioning his girlfriend before this, she was feeling the girlfriend's pain-how she took so long to act on her feelings for the victim, and now he was gone, and she wouldn't get another chance with him. She was just starting to wonder about how that situation might parallel her own life, but she stopped herself and forced herself back into thinking about the case. Meanwhile, Castle left the table during his publishers lunch to escape the hovering LYDIA, and on his way back to the table he tried to break up a fight, which got him punched out and knocked unconscious. He was taken to the hospital for tests, was given happy drugs, and called Lanie and Esposito to come and get him because he didn't want to worry Kate just yet. He's really loopy and has admitted that he loves Kate, but only because he thinks that Kate has already told them what's going on. So now Esplanie thinks that he's going to make things difficult at the Old Haunt in front of Kate's new 'boyfriend'._

* * *

Kate hung up from her call with Castle and just sat there at her desk, with a confused look on her face. It was really short, but it had to be one of the strangest phone calls with Castle that she'd ever had, and she'd had strange ones. There was the time when he greeted her with 'Guess who's got a date with a prostitute?', and of course the time he answered the phone while doing his Christopher Walken impersonation. But this was just...odd. Because he sounded happy. Well, not just happy, but giddy happy. Almost drunk.

He wasn't happy about his publishers meeting-she knew that without a doubt-and she knew that they'd gone out to lunch, but was it a liquid lunch? His speech patterns were different; he was leaving syllables out of words, and talking much more...simplistically than he normally did. She would have questioned him more, but she knew Ryan was just a few feet away from her, so she had to watch what she said on her end. She thought back to just how he answered the phone.

_"Helloooooooo, Beckett."_

He'd sounded so strange that she wondered if it was really him.

_"Hey...Castle? Is this a bad time?"_

_"Noooooo. 'S fine. I'm b'tween...stuff."_

Since when does he not enunciate his words?

_"Good. Listen, I got a text from Dave, and he's going to meet us at the Old Haunt at 7:00. Will you be done with your meetings by then? I'm almost done here."_

_"Suuuuure. Tha' sounds realllllly goooood. I can' wait to see you, honey."_

_"Castle!"_

_"Oh, yeah, riiiiiight. I havta call you Beckett at work, right?"_

'Havta?' What was wrong with him?

_"Castle, you don't sound right. Have you been drinking?"_

_"No! I can tell you with abs'lute truth that I have not been drinking. But I gotta go now an' get back to my...stuff."_

_"Castle, are you-"_

_"Nope! I gotta go, babe. Ditto to you."_ And the call was disconnected.

Babe? Since when did Rick call her 'babe'? The 'ditto' comment sealed it for her that it was indeed him, but if not for that... He just didn't sound...normal. Even for him. She believed him when he said he wasn't drinking, but what was going on with him? She'd just spent two solid weeks with the man and he'd never acted like that. It wasn't terribly blatant, but she knew him better than that, and she knew it wasn't normal for him. The man was a stickler for the English language, and seriously...havta?

Of course, she'd never seen him with all of his publishing cronies, so maybe he took on another persona. It was a very strange persona, but then again, Rick Castle could be a strange man sometimes. But still she couldn't shake the feeling that something just wasn't quite right with him, even though she couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. So, still holding her phone, she opened up a text to send to Rick. Even if he couldn't talk to her, he should still be able to respond to a text, right?

_"Are you sure you're OK? You didn't sound like yourself."_

After she sent the text, she sat the phone aside to review the notes on Joey Cavalini before she turned everything over to the DA.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

A few minutes after Lanie and Esposito came back into the room and Castle told them about the phone call with Kate, his phone chimed again. It was still sitting on his lap, so he grabbed it and read the text message from Kate. "Awwww, look, she's worried about me. She's quite a gal, isn't she?" He held the phone out toward his two temporary keepers so they could see the message.

Esposito took the phone and read the message. He thought it was best to just agree with him, so he said, "Sure, Castle. She sounds worried about you. Hey, you want me to text her back that you're fine?"

"Nooooo! I can type a texxxxt juss fine. Juss wash me!" he said, taking his phone back and beginning to punch some buttons on it. Esposito moved to look over his shoulder and was shocked at what he was reading as Castle was typing. The return text read: _"I'm just fine. I'll see you tonight at the Old Haunt. I can't wait to see Dave again. Maybe we can play Universal Domination."_

Everything was spelled correctly and was gramatically correct, at least as far as Esposito could tell. He was amazed. How did Castle do that? The guy was slurring half of his spoken words, but let him type something, and it's all perfect. Probably the author in him; he was used to writing. Castle looked up at him as if to say, "See?", and Esposito just shrugged at him. Lanie was looking at the exchange, obviously wondering what was going on, and as Castle sent the message, he walked over to her and whispered, "Guy can't talk worth shit since they gave him the happy stuff, but give him something to type, and it comes out perfectly normal. Weird."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Looked fine. Must be that whole author thing."

"No way."

"Yes way!" He grabbed Castle's phone from him and showed her the sent text. She read it, and then she looked at him and said simply, "Huh."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Esposito and Lanie ended up hanging around the emergency room longer than they'd wanted to; the doctors had insisted on giving Castle some food to make sure he could keep it down and didn't get nauseated before they released him. So they sat with him while he ate a muffin and some fruit from the hospital food service, all the while providing commentary on everything.

"Hey, this muffin is kinda small," he whined. "Don't they have any bigger muffins?"

"Do you think they recycle these little paper muffin cups that they bake the muffins in? They should really recycle, ya know."

"Do you think these are real blueberries, or fake blueberries? I bet they're fake. They're really small. I like big ones. Everything I have is _big_," he said with a wink to Esposito. It actually made Esposito look away and Lanie roll her eyes like Kate, although Castle didn't notice. "Next time, I want a _big_ muffin with _big_ blueberries."

Esposito said under his breath, "If there's ever a next time, someone's gonna owe us _big_ time."

Lanie responded, "He can take _us_ to Florida for a while."

Castle, even in his drugged state, apparently had very good hearing, because he quickly looked at her and responded, "You wanna go to Florida? Suuuuuure. No problemmmmo. You know, Kate and I went parasailing. In Florida. She didn't want to go at first, but I did the chicken dance and then she had to go."

Lanie said, "That's nice, Castle," and he went back to examining his muffin for the size of the blueberries, while she mouthed to Esposito, "What the hell?", wondering if he could make sense of what Castle had said, but by the blank look she got in return, evidently he couldn't.

"Is this real fruit?" Esposito and Lanie heard the voice and found that Castle had moved on from his muffin to the status of his fruit in the little fruit cup that he was given. He was currently poking at the small pieces with his finger and watching them bob up and down in the juice. "How come I didn't get to pick what I wanted?" he said, sounding almost pouty.

"Just eat the fruit, Castle. That's the point of giving it to you-so you can eat it, not make commentary on it.

"But I dunno if it's real fruit. What if it's genetically engineeeeeered, with some freaky hormones that make me grow breasts? Maybe iss a conspir'cy. Maybe I'm just a 'speriment. Maybe izz-"

"Castle, are you gonna eat the damn fruit?" Lanie asked.

"No," he pouted. "I don't want breasts. Well, not big girly ones. That's for girls. I'm a guy."

"Well the way that guy took you out with one punch..." Esposito muttered under his breath, which earned him a swat from Lanie, before she went to the edge of the curtained-off area, flagged down a nurse, and asked for a banana or an apple for Mr. Castle.

Lanie came back and sat on the bed by Castle, leaning toward him so she was close to his face. She spoke in that sweet voice with a smile on her face the whole time-the very look she'd given Esposito earlier when she told him she was a cheery person. "Castle, honey, I asked the nurse for a banana or an apple. Nobody can do anything to a banana or an apple, because they have peels on them. The peels protect them. I know this because I'm a doctor. Do you understand?"

He looked at her with a bland look on his face. "Sure. I know you're a doc. Thas why they call you DOCTOR Parrrrrish."

"Good. So since I'm a doctor, I know these things. That's what they teach us in doctor school. Bananas and apples are safe. Okay?" She winked at him like she was letting him in on some secret, and he smiled a stupid smile and nodded back at her. "So when they bring it in, you're going to eat it, okay?"

"Okay." He was the model of compliance now.

"Good boy. Now finish your muffin." She got up off the bed, turned around toward Esposito and rolled her eyes. Then she went over to the edge of the curtain and said down heavily in the chair.

The nurse brought a banana in a few minutes later, and Castle happily accepted it and began peeling it and eating it. When he was finished, he gave Lanie a grin and said "Thans Lanie. That was good. And no big girly breasts for meeee!"

Lanie leaned forward and put her head in her hands. And Esposito, who'd gotten the brilliant idea to shoot a short video of HappyCastle on his phone, stopped recording after the breast comment and turned around, trying to hide the silent laughter that was overtaking his body.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate finished her paperwork in record time and went home to take a quick shower before going to the Old Haunt. The return text from Castle was normal enough, so whatever it was about his phone call that had made her wonder...well, it was obviously nothing to worry about. Universal Domination. Really. And it would probably be like the boat, where she almost had to take his phone away so he'd stop playing that game for a little while. Since she'd never been able to talk to Lanie, she'd just have to take her aside as soon as she got to the bar. Kate figured that Lanie might be a little mad, but she really only had herself to blame for trying to avoid Kate for half the day. Her emergency-whatever it was-couldn't be helped, but the earlier avoidances...that was all on her.

After her shower, she found she had an irrational urge to primp for the evening. She hadn't seen Rick in over a day, and she was surprised to find how much she missed him. After a day. A month ago, not seeing him for a day wouldn't have been out of the ordinary. But now, it had been only a day, and she missed him, and she was primping in preparation for seeing him again. She wanted to look good-really good-when she saw him again. God, she'd gotten pathetic! And then Lanie's voice popped into her head, telling her 'girl, you're not pathetic-you're in love! And it's about damn time!'

As she dried her hair, she caught sight of the velvet box with the ring that was sitting on her dresser. She popped it open with one hand and looked at it, struck again by the beauty, by the significance of what it meant. It represented a committment.

She thought again about Jonathan Hill, and the ring he carried when he died. The ring that he was going to give to Rachel, which, after talking to Rachel and hearing her story, Kate had no doubt that the woman would have accepted, probably with a lot of tears and happiness. And they were so close. She was probably an hour away from being engaged when he was killed.

She couldn't tear her eyes off the ring as she finished drying her hair. She moved her head around, she moved the hairdryer around, but her eyes never left the ring. Finally, she sighed as she turned off the dryer and put it down. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the ring out of the velvet and slipped it on her finger, admiring how it caught the light and sparkled, just as she did the night before. The weight on her hand felt heavy, strange.

But somehow, it felt right.

She backed up and sat down on her bed heavily, still looking at the ring on her outstretched hand. Rachel had admitted her regret for 'freaking out' months ago when Jonathan had brought up marriage, because her mind was now asking all of the 'what-if' questions about their relationship, and what her life would be like if she'd handled things differently. And she knew that the woman was feeling regret-extreme regret-for not realizing or acting on her feelings sooner; for making it seem initially that she wasn't ready for anything more serious.

And wasn't that the way she and Castle always operated? Bottle up the feelings and deny everything? Don't acknowledge what's there, what's been there for a long time, and what's really right under your nose? Well, it was the way she and Castle _used to_ operate, until a certain party in Florida where yes, she freaked out and ran away. But they'd gotten it settled, with wonderful results, and they were together now. And, she thought on another deep breath, he'd _proposed_, and she had the proof sitting right there on her hand.

She never wanted to feel like Rachel must be feeling right now. She didn't want to keep the ring in the drawer for weeks or months or even years, waiting for the 'right' time. What if something happened to Rick, or to her? Did she want to miss out? Did she want Rick to think that she wasn't committed to him? Sometimes, there was no 'right' time...you just had to go for it.

The ring was proof of his intentions, and he'd said that very thing himself-he didn't want there to be a doubt in her mind that he was serious about her and committed to her. But what had she given him? Sure he'd thrown her for a loop initially. But now, now that she's had a chance to really digest it, what did she want?

With a start, she realized that she wanted Rick. She knew that after the last week of being together, really together, she knew she wanted Rick. But now she knew that she really, _without a doubt_ wanted Rick. Always. Forever. One and done.

She wasn't ready for marriage yet; she knew that and he knew that. But she knew that when she was ready to take that step, it would be with him. Once, she couldn't have imagined being with him. And now she couldn't imagine _not_ being with him. She didn't want to shop around, she didn't want to try anyone else out. She couldn't imagine being with anyone else ever again. He was it for her.

And it hit her-wasn't that what the ring was for? It wasn't a wedding ring, it was an engagement ring...a symbol that said that two people were pledged and committed to each other and were intending to enter into marriage at some future date. That they weren't looking around anymore, and that they were planning to spend their lives together. Didn't that describe them already? She knew Rick was committed to her; he'd given her the ring, after all. And by her wearing it, wouldn't she simply be saying the same thing-that she was committed to him, and wanted to spend her life with him?

Then, as she stared at the ring on her finger, she wondered why it had scared her so much when he gave it to her. Putting it on wasn't like going through a marriage ceremony. That came later, and involved another ring. But this ring was just about one form of committment, and she knew she had that. And he did too. Looking at it there, on her finger, she was struck again by the fact that although it felt strange because she'd never before worn a ring on that finger, it also, somehow, felt right. She, serious, analytical, tough Detective Kate Beckett, felt an almost giddy rush when she looked at her hand with the ring on it.

Because, as she looked at the ring there, on her finger, she knew that things had changed and there was now one fact that she had to admit. She knew she couldn't escape it, and actually didn't even want to.

She was engaged.

And she couldn't wait to see Rick's reaction tonight.

* * *

_**I hope I did her thought process okay. The case was the catalyst to her realizing 'hey, I'm already there (committed to him in her own mind), so why not put on the ring? No, I'm not ready to get married right now, but I'm okay with saying I'll marry you sometime, so I'm going to wear the ring.' She didn't want to end up like Rachel, thinking that she delayed because of her own hangups, and then it ended up being too late.**_

_**And I really AM sorry for the cliffhanger. It just seemed to be a natural place to end it, otherwise the chapter would be way too long. **_

_**So hey...what did you think? Let me know!**_


	70. Chapter 70

_**It's so cool that you all like HappyCastle! I really enjoyed writing him like that. Heck, he's fun to write anyway, but with absolutely no filter due to being drugged, imagining NF playing him...I mean, WOW, there's just so much fun material there! In fact, Verenouche said the same thing in his/her review; to see the fruit/boob scene in the show, as played by NF, would be wonderful given the facial expressions that man is capable of!**_

_**I know a lot of you were really impatient for Kate to put on the ring already. Rest assured, this was always my intent...that she would have a revelation that wearing the ring didn't mean she was instantly going to be married, and there would be a case that would help her along toward that mental awakening. I've known this maybe not from the beginning of the story (because, heck, then I wasn't even sure it would be 3 chapter...haha), but certainly since the point where he gave her the ring. Now, I wrote part of the Old Haunt scene months ago, but then Castle went and got hurt by the dude in the restaurant, so darn, some of it won't work anymore. So not only did he maim Castle's face, but he maimed my story as well! He should get an extra assault charge for that, I think.**_

_**Disclaimer: No, despite this being chapter 70, I still don't own any of the characters, but I do like writing about them. Although sometimes when I really watch the show, I wonder just who the hell I think I am to try to write a story about them. I mean, me? The creators and the writers do such a wonderful job that I pretty much can't write for a little while after I actually watch the show b/c I don't feel like I can do them justice. At all. I have to decompress and wait a while, and then I can handle it again. It's like if I see the 'real' Beckett and Castle, it doesn't work; I have to wait for the fake versions-my versions-to come to the forefront of my mind again. The versions in my mind are far less intimidating to me than the real versions. ;-)**_

* * *

Esposito met the cop in the ER. He was a young guy, just sent to take a statement about the altercation that had happened in the restaurant; the altercation that had landed a guy in the hospital after he was assaulted and knocked unconscious. The uniform was very anxious to do his job and interview the victim, especially when he found out the victim was a famous author. He was also very insistent and tried to pull the 'police' card, until Esposito flashed his own badge. But Esposito was not one to be bullied, and he knew that Castle's statement would be useless while he was on the happy drugs and was ranting about being used as an experiment for giving 'girly breasts' to unsuspecting, abused authors. So he flashed his badge and told the uniform that Mr. Castle was 'indisposed' and he would be happy to give a statement in the morning.

They tried to get Castle to recount more of what happened to land him in this predicament, but the whole thing just resulted in more questions the minds of Lanie and Esposito. Castle was mumbling something about getting away from some twit, renaming Nikki Heat, using bad manners so he could eat, going to the bathroom, and on the way back from the bathroom, seeing some man about to make a scene.

But when he got to the next part, he really confused his two friends. "So I stopped to talk to the guy. Figgered I could turn on the Castle charm, you know? But even though Kate told me not to, I did it anyway. Guess i shoulda listened to her, huh? Because he clocked me right after that."

The last comment made Lanie and Esposito look at each other again, and after a look from Lanie, Esposito asked, "Hey, uh, Castle? Uh, Beckett wasn't with you when you got hurt. She was at the station all afternoon. I know. Ryan and I were with her. She was interrogating a suspect."

"Oh, yeah. I know _that_," he said, like it was obvious. "But I heard her up heeeeere," he said, tapping the side of his head, but then wincing when he inadvertently hit a tender spot. "Ow! That hurt. Yup, I shoulda listened to her." Lanie did a pretty good imitation of a Beckett eye-roll after that, thinking that not only was he imagining that they were involved, but now he was imagining her talking to him telepathically or something.

After Castle finally finished his snack and didn't seem to be nauseated by it, they made sure he could move around sufficiently and took him to the restroom to relieve himself. Of course, the 'new' drugged Castle wanted Esposito to accompany him, and he insisted that they try to pee in the toilet together to see how many bubbles they could make. The male nurse was helping Castle to the bathroom, and he tried to look away and pretend he hadn't heard. Esposito just said "Dude, I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that. There is such a thing as too much sharing, you know." The nurse tried to keep a straight face but it was a losing battle, and when faced with a toilet, Castle just couldn't hold back anymore and dropped his pants like a two-year-old, inadvertently mooning Lanie through the open door as Esposito tried to exit the room, muttering "that is so much more of Castle than I ever needed to see." Lanie just folded her arms over her chest and, looking at Castle's naked ass, muttered to an absent Kate, "Girl, that Dave better have a fine behind because you don't know what you're missing with this one."

As Castle relieved himself, Esposito cringed as he heard Castle say, "See, I don't need you, 'Spozzzzito. I can make a lot of bubbles all by myself!"

Lanie, done with admiring Castle's bare tushie, looked at Esposito, who was now gazing up at the ceiling and was obviously trying to pretend he was anywhere else. With hands on her hips, Lanie asked curiously, "Do you guys REALLY do shit like this? I mean, really?"

"No comment."

"Good, because I'm sure I really don't want to know. And it would most likely not do anything to enhance my opinion of you, or of the male species in general."

"Not even if it was my bare butt?"

"Not even if it was your bare butt, especially if you were flashing that bare butt around to everyone and trying to have bubble contests with the front plumbing." She gave him a look that said that it was prudent to drop this topic of conversation.

After they got Castle back into his clothing, the medical staff prepared to release him. He'd have to give a statement about the assault the next day, but for now he could go home as long as he had someone with him at all times. He was sent home with the pill forms of some of the IV meds he'd received earlier during his tests, so when the IV meds wore off, he could take the pills. They said that within another hour or two his meds would start to wear off and his head would start throbbing. So Esposito pocketed the little bottle with his pain meds, while Castle was still grinning like a lunatic at the prospect of being released.

Esposito had called Ryan to fill him in on the situation, although he prudently left out the part about the invitation to get into a literal peeing contest with Castle. Ryan said he would go ahead to the Old Haunt; he'd meet them there and would try to help them run interference with Beckett if need be.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Lanie and Esposito had it all worked out. They'd let Lanie out near the bar, and she would run in and try to warn Beckett about Castle. Esposito would drive around and pretend to be dense about finding a parking space, which would hopefully give Lanie some time to talk to Beckett to clue her in on what had happened and about Castle's current state of mind.

But much to Lanie's relief, Castle was actually pretty quiet on the drive. He didn't make any comments about conspiracy theories or drugged fruit. Lanie had been sitting in the back with Castle, just to make sure he didn't start poking at things as he was prone to do. So when they got to the Old Haunt, Esposito let Lanie out right in front of the bar, but when Castle started to climb out of the car after her, she unceremoniously slammed the door in his face. "Hey!" he said, apparently slighted by the action. "Who does she think she is? I wanted to get out too!"

"Hey Castle? I could really used some help trying to find a parking spot. Can you be on the lookout for me?" Esposito said, trying to distract him.

"I guess," he said with a pout as Esposito pulled the car away from the curb. He started to drive the car around the block. Rick didn't say anything else for several minutes, until he spotted a parking place and pointed it out. But to his surprise, Esposito just cruised right past it. He looked at Esposito, who was staring at the traffic and had his hand propped nonchalantly on the wheel, and then turned back to the parking space that they'd missed, which was now being taken by another car. "Hey, Esposito? Why didn't you take that spot? I thought I was s'posed to be your lookout? Do you need me to drive or something?"

"Nah, Castle, I'm fine." Esposito involuntarily shuddered. The thought of Castle driving in his drugged state, with Esposito as a passenger, was not a pretty thought.

"Well, if you're fine, will you park the car already?"

"Yeah, sure..." he said absently.

"Esposito, there's another parking spot up there on the right. If you don't take that spot, I think I might get carsick or something from all of this riding around. You know, those pain meds, they can cause nausea...the doctor even said so. And I'm sitting right in back of you, so if I hurl, you know where it would go."

"Castle, we both know you're not feeling nauseaus." Wait a minute, how did Castle even manage to say 'nausea' without slurring it. Were his pain meds wearing off? If they were, then hopefully he'd be able to keep his mouth shut about his undying love for Beckett.

But Castle wasn't done. "And," he continued with a twinkle in his eye, "I'll tell Lanie about that time you went to interview the suspect in the Henderson case..."

Esposito's head shot around until he glared at Castle in the back seat briefly before turning his eyes back to the road once again. "You wouldn't."

"I would, if you pass up that parking spot."

Damn, Esposito thought as he swung the car into the spot. As he parked, he missed Castle give a little grin in the back seat. Esposito hoped Lanie was ready, and that Castle's pain meds were indeed wearing off, because it looked like Castle couldn't be delayed any longer.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Lanie entered the bar, and from the looks of it, she must have beaten Kate there. Well, good...she wouldn't have to interrupt her from anything when she tried to explain about Castle. Hopefully she wouldn't arrive with Dave, because she really didn't want to have to explain about Castle, his accident and his delusions in front of the other man. She realized she hadn't refreshed her makeup in a while, so since Kate wasn't there yet, she headed off to the bathroom, in search of a mirror.

Approximately one minute later, just as Lanie entered the bathroom, Kate walked into the bar. Looking around, she could see that she was the first one there. The bartender that was working that night was one that she knew, so she headed to the bar and ordered herself a drink. The bar wasn't too busy now, and after she got her drink, she took it over to a table in the corner to save the table in case the crowd picked up later. After she set her drink down, she happened to glance over to toward the entrance, and she saw Dave walk in. She knew from what he'd said earlier that he'd be alone; Joelle had to work a slightly later shift and would come later when she was done with work.

Dave was looking around, looking just a tad uncomfortable at not seeing anyone that he knew. After the day she had, it was nice to see a familiar face. And when she saw him, it really hit home that she would soon see Rick too. A smile lit her face at the thought, and she set her coat on the chair and went over to greet their new friend, the weight of the ring that she was now wearing on her finger making the smile just a little bit wider.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Lanie exited the bathroom and as she came out of the short hallway where the restrooms were, she saw Kate put her drink down on a table. Lanie started toward her, still wondering how she was going to explain this whole mess with Castle, when she saw a big smile overtake Kate's face as she took off walking toward the door. She followed Kate's intended direction, and saw the man standing by the door, looking around, who, when he caught sight of Kate, flashed a smile at her in return. And even though he wasn't shirtless and he didn't have the ocean in back of him or Kate sitting on his lap, she recognized him. Kate's Dave. She kept watching as Kate went over to him and gave him a quick hug and said a few words before they turned and headed to the table that Kate had been at before.

Lanie had been slowly moving toward the table as she watched Kate greet Dave. Now, they were almost to the table when Kate looked up, caught sight of Lanie, and stopped dead in her tracks. But being Kate, she recovered quickly, and walking up to Lanie, asked, "So are you done avoiding me now? Because we need to talk."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After he parked the car, Esposito went around to the passenger side to meet Castle. Except he was still in the car. Esposito opened the door and bent down to look inside, where he found Castle with his eyes closed, two fingers pressed to the non-bruised side of his head. "What's wrong, Castle? Why don't you get out? We're here, and that's what you've been waiting for, right? Come on, man."

"Esposito, give me the pain pills. My head is starting to pound again. And I really don't want my head to be pounding when I see Beckett again."

Esposito quickly weighed the situation. He seemed pretty lucid, and he was pronouncing most things correctly. And he'd called Beckett 'Beckett'. Maybe he was coming off the drugs. He supposed one pill wouldn't hurt him, and they were pills, so they wouldn't take effect immediately anyway like the IV drugs do. Maybe he could get him in there, talk to Beckett and this Dave, and then get him out again before he got too loopy from the pill. Yeah, that would work.

He dug out the pill bottle and gave one to Castle, who looked at it and said simply, "Two."

Esposito hesitated. At his delay, Castle said "Come on, Esposito, I know the doctor said I could have two, and I know he also said I didn't want to get behind in the pills for at least the first night." So give me another one." Esposito was once again surprised that he could be so coherent for some of the time and so out of it for other things. He shook another pill into Castle's palm, and he watched as Castle popped it into his mouth immediately and swallowed them dry. Then he grimaced and shuddered. "Blech! That tastes horrible! Can't they make these things cherry flavored or something?"

"Most people take them with liquid. Here," he said, grabbing the bottle water from Castle's 'take home' bag from the ER, "drink some water." After Castle drank a few gulps, Esposito stepped back and said "Let's go."

They walked down the stairs and into the bar.

* * *

_**I know, I know. You think I'm evil now. But I'm only a little evil this time, because I have part of the next chapter written already. Once again, the chapter just got too long and I had to cut it off, and this was the best place. Trust me.**_

**_And yeah, I learned recently that you don't want to get behind in your pain pills. Happened to me once, and that was enough of a lesson. _**

_**Rest assured, though, that the big reveal-and all of the ensuing crazy drama-WILL indeed happen in the next chapter. Which means, folks that we're almost done with the story! Can you believe it? I can't. And for those of you who think it's been going on too long, your angst will come to an end soon.**_

_**Now: motivate me! I've been working on updating this story a lot lately because of your wonderful reviews, so keep up with the awesome motivation! You are all amazing and I'm so lucky to have you all as readers! Thanks so much!**_


	71. Chapter 71

_**Whoa...this is a long one, so prepare yourselves. This chapter is almost the length of two chapters, so I hope you all enjoy the longer length.**_

_**We cover a lot of ground here, but not all of the ground that we need to cover before the story is done. So, obviously, the story isn't done yet. And HappyCastle has been resurrected. He's really happy too. ;-)**_

_**Now, I'm not too sure about this chapter. So if you hate it, if it doesn't go the way you thought it would, at least be kind. Please?**_

_**Disclaimer: Don't own any of the characters, except for maybe Dave.**_

* * *

Lanie looked at Kate, and caught the determined look in her eye. Normally, she'd give it back to her and pull some of her Lanie cockiness, but she knew this wasn't the time. Instead, she shrugged her head toward Dave and asked, "Yeah, I need to talk to you about something too. But first, isn't there someone you want me to meet?" Lanie knew that she needed to explain about Castle, and quickly, but she owed it to her friend to get a proper introduction to the new man in her life.

"Lanie, this is Dave. Dave, Lanie." She stopped long enough to let them shake hands before continuing. "But Lanie, that's what I need to talk to you abou-"

"The new love of your life, and _that's_ how you introduce him to your best friend?" Lanie chided, giving her a little smile. She wanted to at least attempt to get her into a good mood when she told Kate about Castle and his weird mental state; hopefully then, she wouldn't want to kill him quite as much later.

But the smile dropped off Kate's face at Lanie's words. She'd filled in Dave earlier on the fact that she couldn't go through with fooling Lanie any longer, and that she was going to tell her the truth before tonight. But that was before Lanie left for her 'emergency', and she'd totally forgotten to tell Dave that she hadn't been able to come clean with Lanie. Now, as she glanced at Dave, she could see that he had an uber-confused look on his face at being described by Lanie as the new love of her life. Kate rolled her eyes, and said, "Lanie, if you would just hold it for a second, I'd tell you what I've been trying to tell you since last night." She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear, using the time to figure out exactly what to say. "Dave is not my boyfriend. The truth is that it's actually-"

Kate was trying to come clean, and that was great. The only problem was that unconsciously, Kate used her _left _hand to tuck the hair behind her ear, which put her left hand in plain view and advertised the rock that she was now wearing on that hand. And when Lanie caught sight of the ring, her jaw dropped lower than Kate had ever seen it, and her eyes got big. She heard the whole story the night before; when Kate was ready to be engaged, she should just start wearing the ring. But Lanie had no idea it would be just one measley day later! "Oh, my God," she interrupted, grabbing Kate's hand, and for the first time, Kate realized what she'd done.

"Uh...Lanie...no...it's just-" Kate stammered, grabbing her hand back.

Dave just stood there, looking shell-shocked because although he'd never seen the ring before, he certainly knew what a diamond on a woman's left ring finger meant. And since this Lanie thought he and Kate were together, that would mean that she thought...oh, my. He turned to Kate and said softly, "Are we, uh, like, engaged or something?" He raised one eyebrow at her and almost looked a little bit ill.

But before Kate could answer, Lanie recovered from her shock and went on the warpath, with her war directed at Dave. "You don't look too happy, mister, to see that she's finally wearin' your engagement ring!" Lanie snapped at him, trying to defend her best friend. "And right now, I'm not feelin' too happy about not seein' you very happy, if you know what I mean." She was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but when the man reacted like that the first time he sees her best friend wearing the engagement ring that he gave her...well, she was going to let him have it. If Kate was putting herself out there for him, he could at least act a _little bit_ happy!

Kate hissed through clenched teeth, "Lanie, _shut UP for a minute, _will you?" She turned toward Dave and put her hand on his shoulder. "I never got a chance to tell her what I was going to tell her. You know..." she said, prompting him, willing him to know what she meant. Lanie acquiesced to Kate and just watched the two of them, still trying to see how their body language together seemed now that she was with them both in person.

His face and body visibly relaxed and he smiled a dazzling smile, and Kate knew that he understood her meaning. "Oh! Okay. Good. Because I don't know how I'd explain a fiancee to my wife," he joked. Well, at least Kate knew it was a joke, because she'd spent enough time with Dave to know his sense of humor. And of course, he was in on the farce. But inwardly, she cringed, because she knew it wouldn't be taken well by Lanie.

But then she caught sight of Lanie, who had no idea of the joke, and whose mouth had dropped open again and then within a split second, her face had morphed into a visage of outrage. "Wife? _WIFE? _You have a _wife_ and you're screwin' around with my girl in a tropical hot tub?" Lanie looked like she was about to launch herself at Dave, and Kate stepped in front of her.

"Lanie! I told you to shut up! It's not what you think. That's what I've been trying to tell you..."

"What? That somehow you got hooked up with a two-timing creep? God, girl, I thought you had better sense than that!"

"I did! I do! Lanie, it's..." She didn't get to finish her explanation though, because just then, she caught sight of something over Lanie's shoulder, toward the entrance, and her voice just trailed off. It was Rick, walking slowly toward her with Esposito, and some part of her mind registered that Ryan was just coming in the door behind them. And Rick was...oh, my God! She took in the bruising and the swollen eye, the slowness of his gait. What happened to him? And then the rest of the bar dropped away from her consciousness as she finished what she was trying to say to Lanie. "It's Castle," she muttered in shock as she pushed past Lanie to try to get over to Rick as fast as she could.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He hadn't seen her in almost a full day, and now his eyes were feasting on the sight of her She really was beautiful, even though he couldn't really see her very well through his left eye. After spending just about every minute with her for the past two weeks, except for his little excursion to buy a certain item, not seeing her for an entire day felt like an eternity to him-especially after the long night where sleep eluded him, the excruciating publishers meeting from earlier, LYDIA, and then the hospital. Although right now, what he remembered about the hospital was hit or miss. But his head was pounding, although it did seem a tiny bit better now than it had earlier, so maybe those pain pills were starting to take effect.

He could see Kate, and she was standing by Dave, closely. They were talking to Lanie. Then she turned to Dave and put her arm on his shoulder. Rick knew it was just part of the ruse as they had agreed originally, but now he wondered what was happening because Lanie seemed angry all of a sudden, and he couldn't quite understand that because she knew about everything by now, so they should all just be sitting around, talking about how they were all right about him and Kate, laughing and having a good time.

But he just wanted to be with Kate again, be next to her, and now Dave was. And his head hurt, and he was trying to figure out what was going on, and he really hoped the pain pills would take effect soon. And even though he knew Dave, and he liked him, and he knew Dave's wife, for goodness sakes, he still couldn't stop the irrational jealousy that found its way into his gut at seeing her with him when that was where he wanted to be right now. It was like on the boat all over again, when they'd taken the pictures that they'd sent to Lanie. It was jealousy like when he had caught her kissing Demming, only it was about a hundred times worse now. Even though he knew it was all ridiculous. He felt like such an idiot. A jealous idiot who was missing his girlfriend. And to top it all off, a lonely, jealous idiot with a really bad headache.

Just then, right after he started walking toward her, she looked across the bar and caught sight of him. And he wanted to kick himself when he saw the shock and concern run across her beautiful face as she registered his injuries. If he would have been able to see anything else but Kate, he would have registered Lanie walking after her, saying, "He got punched out...Kate, sweetie, he's kind of high now, so don't listen to too much of what he says." She continued to follow Kate, and as Kate reached Castle, Lanie leaned in closer to her and, putting her hand on Kate's arm in a show of support, said "Honey, he thinks-"

Kate turned to Lanie quickly, and said in a steely voice, "Lanie, not now!" Lanie backed off.

Then Kate turned back to Rick, who was looking at her through one normal right eye, and one swollen, bruised left eye. The area surrounding his left eye was red and some of the area was turning a vibrant purple. The area under the eye was swollen, as was the top of the eye right under his eyebrow, leaving a narrowed area that he could actually see out of. The swelling made his eyebrow tilt up just a bit, and it might have made him look a little roguish if not for the horrible look of the bruising. He looked like he was an extra on a movie, and the makeup artist should win an Oscar. He looked like hell. She instinctively raised her right hand to try to touch his swollen face, but he shrank back from her touch. "Rick...?" she asked questioningly, the concern evident in her voice.

"Sorry. Reflex. I've been poked and prodded a lot today, since this happened, and it's kind of hurting now. Pain meds wore off and the next dose hasn't kicked in yet."

"Castle, what the hell happened to you?" Her tone was a bit harsh, but she was thrown for a loop at seeing him like this, and she needed the familarity and the comfort that their banter always brought them. And when they were bantering, she knew she was never gentle with him.

"That lunch with my publisher? Turned out to be a little hazardous to my health."

"What happened? What did you do...threaten to make Nikki join a convent and embrace a life of celibacy and they all turned on you?" she tried to joke, in a last ditch attempt to get a reign over the emotions that she was feeling at seeing him injured. She could feel herself getting emotional, damn it, and she needed the humor to try to get herself through it.

"Nah...just saw a guy threaten a lady, and I stepped in and tried to help out, and he decked me. And then I, oh, may have knocked my head on a table, which rendered me unconscious."

"And don't forget your time at the hospital, or the CT scan," Esposito offered from behind Castle.

"RICK!" she exclaimed. "Oh, God, a _CT scan_? Unconscious? Are you okay?"

He put his arm on her shoulder, and then, as he stared at her, drinking in the sight of her face, he raised a thumb and caressed her cheek. He just needed to touch her. "I'm fine. Really. I promise. Well, just a little headache."

She cocked her head to the side a little bit, unconsciously leaning into his touch on her face. "How can you be fine with an eye looking like that? Can you even see out of it?"

Lanie had stepped back at Kate's admonishment, but now, once again, she stood there slack-jawed as she watched Kate basically forget about Dave as she stood in front of Castle and took in his injuries. She thought for sure that Castle would end with more injuries when she saw him very familiarly touch Kate's shoulder and stroke her cheek. But then she...she seemed to lean closer to him?

"I can see enough. It's just a little..." His voice trailed off as Kate's posture went erect again, as she jerked away from him and turned toward Lanie.

"Wait a minute! You were trying to tell me something about him just now, Lanie. You _knew_ about this, didn't you?" Her voice had turned into icy steel; hard, direct and cold. "You _knew_ he was hurt?"

Lanie nodded her head. "But-"

"And you didn't tell me?" Then she had another thought, and she whipped around to face Esposito. Sticking her right index finger into Esposito's chest, she said tersely, "And _you_ mentioned the CT scan. You knew about this too?" She was silent for a few seconds, and with the look on her face, nobody really knew what to say right then. But during her silence, she processed another piece of the puzzle, and the tone of her voice got even more menacing, if that was possible. "Oh, my God, that was your emergency! And yours," she said, turning back to Lanie. "That was _hours_ ago! Why didn't you tell me?"

Rick was the one who finally spoke. "I made 'em promise not to call you. I called Esp'zito and he and Lanie came to the hospital."

Lanie dared to step forward again. She laid her hand briefly on Kate's arm. "Sweetie, we knew this was a big night for you, with that..._Dave_ coming here and meeting us and everything." She was still reeling from the 'wife' comment from a few minutes earlier, and said Dave's name with some level of derision, but recovered quickly. "When Castle didn't want you to know about him going to the hospital, we went along with it because we didn't want to ruin your special night." She glanced back at Dave, who was waiting over by the table where they'd originally been standing. "Or what was _supposed to be_ your special night."

Kate turned back to Rick. Her concern over finding him beaten up and injured was warring with genuine anger at him for not telling her, for actively and intentionally trying to keep it from her. She took a few deep breaths to try to calm the anger that she was feeling, and her voice got very low when she spoke to him. "And you," she said, poking him in the chest just like she'd done with Esposito, "why would you think it would be okay to keep this from me? Huh?"

"I juss...I knew you'd worry, honey. An' I know you're real busy an' everything at work an' I dint wanna disturb that. Iss your firs' day back an' ever'thing."

Kate pondered what he said. Honey? He called her honey in that phone call from earlier too. And he sounded strange then too. Then, it dawned on her like a light bulb was switched on in her brain; she figured out the missing piece from earlier. She knew something was odd when she'd talked to him earlier, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Head injury...hospital...CT scan...'havta'...slurring words. She cocked her head to the side as she raised an eyebrow at him. "You're high, aren't you?"

"Juss high on my love for you, honey!" he responded with a goofy smile. They were both looking at each other, so neither Castle nor Beckett noticed Esposito look at the ceiling and mutter something in spanish, or Lanie say 'ohhh, shit, writer boy' under her breath. What they'd hoped to avoid-his random declarations of love for Beckett, with Dave standing right there, no less-had just happened. And Ryan, having not previously seen Castle's declarations in the hospital, merely stared at them with wide eyes and his mouth hanging open. He'd heard about them from Lanie and Esposito, but seeing Castle like this, and how easily it just slipped out; well, it was something to witness firsthand. The man had a small brain-to-mouth filter as it was, but now it would appear that it was totally and completely gone.

Then, goofy smile still intact, Castle clarified, "But I do have some help from those li'l pills they gave me when I lef' the hossip...the hoss...that big place with all the doctors. An' my headache is lots better now!" He nodded his head earnestly, but stopped when he swayed just a bit.

Kate looked at Esposito. "Pain pills?" she asked very simply.

Esposito nodded. "Right before we came in. He wanted two of them. Obviously, they've kicked in," he finished dryly.

Motormouth HappyCastle couldn't be silent any longer, and he extrapolated on the idea of the pills. He looked at Kate with another goofy smile, but there was an added quality to it now; one that worried her just a bit, because it reminded her of the look a guy would get on his face when he's trying to pick up a girl in a bar. "Now, you might be wondrin' if they're li'l blue pills, but they're not. I can 'sure you of that. These are fer my head." Then he leaned closer to Kate as if to say something for her ears only, and even though he thought he reduced his volume when he spoke, he really didn't. "Well, they're for my head up here," he continued, tapping his head near his injured left eye, which made him look at his hand and then say "Ow!" Unfortunately, though, he continued with his thought and said, "They're for my head up here, not blue pills for my other-"

"Whoa, whoa, Castle!" Esposito interrupted, stepping forward and clamping a hand on his shoulder. "Remember, we don't really need to over-share here, man. Public place and definitely TMI."

Kate looked at Esposito again. She'd also figured out, too late, what Castle was about to say, and she was grateful to Esposito for stoping him before she could. She looked at Esposito. "Does he just blurt out _anything_ that might happen to flutter through his mind?"

"Pretty much. It's even worse than normal."

She turned back to Castle, who still had a goofy grin on his face. God only knew what the man had been spurting from his mouth up until now. But the fact that he was on the pain pills didn't really matter; she was still angry that he'd kept his injuries from her, and she was going to let him know, pain meds or no pain meds. "You, mister, are still in trouble, no matter how loopy you are! I can't _believe _you...you get yourself knocked out and taken to the hospital and you don't call me? How dare you! You just let me find out _randomly_? You think you don't have to tell me something like this? Let me tell you something, buster," she told him sternly, using the opportunity to poke her finger at his chest again, "I should be the _first_ damn person you call when you get hurt like that! Or so help me, you will be hurting a _lot_ worse than you are now!"

Lanie and Esposito, not to mention Ryan, were all staring at Kate like she'd lost her mind. They all expected her to be slightly annoyed at Castle for getting himself hurt, but for the most part, they thought she'd be occupied with showing off Dave. They never expected the reaction they were actually seeing, and frankly, they didn't really understand it. She was damn near irate, and they could tell that her reaction was all borne from concern for him, and anger because he was hurt and she didn't know about it. And Dave was standing _right there_, and she was ignoring him in her her display of this overwhelming concern for Castle.

Kate stopped to take a breath after her outburst, looking up at the ceiling to try to calm herself. Sure, the guy had stuff happen to him, like falling over couches, but this was serious! She hated seeing him like this. Seeing his injuries, knowing he'd been knocked unconscious and was at the hospital and she knew nothing about it...her pulse was racing and she was mad and worried all at the same time. During her tirade, she'd seen the goofy smile leave Rick's face as he realized through his haze of pain meds that she was really and truly angry with him. After she got done poking him in the chest to make her point, she left her hand laying on his chest as she tried to get control of herself. And touching him did help to calm her somewhat; she could feel the beating of his heart under her left hand and she knew he was okay. But she wasn't prepared when Castle spoke again, and the one slurred word brought her eyes back down so her gaze collided with his.

"Whazzat?"

And then she felt his hand grab hers, the one that was resting on his chest, and he held it up in between them, flashing the diamond for everyone to see. She sucked in a quick breath as she realized what he was looking at.

He saw that she was wearing the ring.

She'd actually forgotten about it! In her haze of first concern for his injuries, and then her simmering anger as she realized that nobody notified her that he was hurt, she hadn't even remembered the ring. And now, despite the somewhat glazed look of his eyes, she could see that he was one hundred percent aware of the significance of her having that ring on her finger.

"Izzat really what I thinkitis on your finger?" he asked, still slurring some words, but deadly serious with his tone and with the look on his face.

She rolled her eyes, but she knew that now that he'd seen it, there was no going back. "Yes, you drugged up doofus, it is."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As soon as Kate put her left hand on Castle's chest, Lanie had a bad feeling. She knew, she just _knew_ that Castle would notice the ring. And with the current state of his mind, she knew the chances were good-really good-that he'd make some highly inappropriate and way-too-familiar comment, one that was most likely rooted in the delusions of a drugged mind rather than in reality. She just raised her fingers to her forehead and closed her eyes, not really wanting to see how this played out when Castle shocked Kate with his declarations of love, or when Kate burst Castle's love-bubble.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Esposito and Ryan, unfortunately, didn't have the brief introduction to the ring that Lanie had had, so when Castle picked up her hand, and they saw what was on it, both of them physically shrank back. Esposito glanced at Lanie, who was standing there with her fingers pressed to her forehead, and it was obvious to him that she'd somehow known about the ring already. He'd have to have a talk with her later about her cluing him into stuff like this, especially when he'd spent the afternoon babysitting Castle and trying to avoid having peeing contests with the man.

Ryan muttered "Oh, man," while Esposito adopted a pose similar to Lanie. Then Ryan whispered to Esposito, "Dude, is that-"

"Yeah," he said. "Looks like it."

"But where...?"

"Probably from him." Esposito said, gesturing toward Dave, who was still standing there several feet behind Beckett and Castle. The two male detectives leveled their best interrogation gazes on Dave, trying to figure out how the dude could just stand there doing nothing when all of this was going down. But when Dave saw them looking at him, he just smiled and gave a little wave. It wasn't the reaction they expected, and not knowing what to do, the two detectives just dropped the stern looks and offered a little half smile and an uncomfortable little wave in return. Because what do you say to a guy that you've never met, who's apparently just given one of your friends an engagement ring, while that friend is currently standing pretty close and having a chummy conversation with another guy that you always thought she'd end up with?

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Despite the fact that she was mad at him for not telling her about his injuries, despite the fact that he looked like hell, and despite the fact that he was obviously pretty drugged up, she still couldn't resist the smile that she saw slowly blooming on his face. It was like when she'd off-handedly mentioned buying him a birthday present when they went out for pizza, and the man practically got giddy about it. And despite everything that had happened tonight, it was one of the sweetest smiles she'd ever seen on him, showing pure happiness. Well, it was pure happiness in a horror-show kind of way, given the state of his eye. But she knew that pain meds made it hard to censor or fake your emotions, so she knew that any reaction now was pure.

The smile just kept getting wider and wider until she thought it would split his face in two. And looking at him, at his reaction, she couldn't help smiling either. This was what she'd been waiting for...for the moment when he saw that she'd really made her decision about 'them', and that she was all in. No turning back. It hadn't turned out exactly the way she'd hoped, but hey, with them, what _ever_ went smoothly? As they gazed at each other, they were lost in their own little world now, oblivious to all that was around them. The bar, Lanie, Esposito, Ryan and Dave had all ceased to exist. He still held her hand as they smiled at each other, but then in a move that surprised her, he reached up with his other hand and briefly stroked her cheek in a reverent move, and then reached behind her neck to pull their heads together until their still-smiling lips met each other in a kiss.

If they'd been aware of any of their surroundings, they would have seen the jaws of two detectives and one ME just about hit the ground. Castle was kissing Beckett! And she was kissing him back. Willingly. And she wasn't trying to beat him up. And she was kissing Castle while her new boyfriend/fiance/whatever was right there!

Why did they all feel like they'd just entered the Twilight Zone?

And it seemed that everyone's mind went in exactly the same direction, because all at once, the three pairs of eyes went from the Castle/Beckett liplock to rest on Dave. And he still had the smile on his face, but then when he noticed them all watching him, obviously waiting for something, the smile dropped off of his face. He looked down at himself, searching his clothes. "What?" he asked them. "Is my fly open or something?"

Lanie marched over to him. "No. That!" she said, gesturing to the nearby PDA.

"Oh, yeah. They're cute, aren't they?"

Lanie just stared at him, her mouth agape. "Listen, sugar, I don't know you at all, but Kate seems to like you, although from what I've heard, I have no idea why. But it seems to me that if you give the girl an engagement ring-"

"I didn't," Dave interrupted.

"You didn't what?"

"I didn't give her an engagement ring," he stated simply. "You figure it out. Actually, I thought you'd know by now-Kate said you would-but for some reason, it looks like you don't."

Lanie, still stunned by her best friend kissing Castle, and confused by this man's nonchalance over the whole thing, was not really processing what he was saying very well. But she was starting to get a feeling about everything she was witnessing, and it was damn time to get to the bottom of it. Shaking her head at him, she walked over to the Castle/Beckett liplock and unceremoniously tapped Kate on the shoulder.

After feeling the tap, Kate looked up, almost surprised to find Lanie right there, glaring at her. She quickly came back to the present, and once again took notice of her surroundings. Kate's eyes flitted back to Castle, who was still grinning, and then back again to Lanie. But before she could say anything, HappyCastle struck again and announced, "Hey, Lanie, look!" He held up Kate's hand that he still held, showing her the ring. "We're gettin' marrrrrieeed!"

Lanie looked at Kate again. "Just what the hell is goin' on here, girl? Care to tell us all why you're suckin' face with writer boy? Because I'm beginning to get a picture of something here, an' it's not a pretty one."

"If you'll try not to interrupt me for a change, I'll be happy to tell you what I've been trying to tell you since you started avoiding me last night. But let's sit down first. I think our high-flyer here," she said, indicating Castle, "could stand to sit down for a bit. I think I'm practically holding him up now as it is."

"You gonna carrrrry me, sweetie pie?" Castle crooned.

"Shut up, Castle," both Kate and Lanie said together. But they got him over to a table, and then sat down, all of them. Castle was still grinning. And he refused to relinquish Kate's left hand, which earned him an eyeroll from her and odd looks from everyone else.

When they were all seated, it was not Lanie, not Esposito, but Ryan who got the ball rolling. "So, Beckett, care to tell us why you're wearing a rock on your hand, your _left_ hand, I might add, and why you're sucking face with Castle here? And please, don't tell us it's a pity thing because he's hurt, or a...what did you call it before? Oh, yes, a temporary aberration."

Kate took a deep breath, but before she could speak, HappyCastle was at it again. "We're gettin' marrrrieeeed!" he almost sang. "Beckett an' me! Or Kate. I can call her Kate now b'cuz she's not at work." He shut up then, just sitting there nodding, very satisfied with his proclamation.

Everyone else was still looking like they were a bit unsure of what else to do or say. With what might come out of his mouth at any given second, HappyCastle tended to keep you on your guard. So Kate continued, "We brought you here to meet Dave, yes. So, first, Dave, you've already met Lanie. This is Kevin Ryan and this is Javier Esposito."

For some reason, up to that point, Castle hadn't noticed Dave. So he looked up and saw Dave on the other side of Kate and exclaimed, "Dave! Duuude! I dint see ya there. I missed ya, man!" And he tried to get up to shake hands with Dave, but only succeeded in getting his feet wrapped in the legs of the chair, and half fell on Kate.

Kate propped him off of her and back onto his chair, and Dave just leaned around her and said "Good to see you too, Rick, but we'll catch up later, dude." He gestured to the other occupants of the table.

Castle somehow got the hint, and looking around, said "Oh, riiiiight. Bad timing." He patted Kate on the shoulder. "Go on, honey."

Kate gave Castle a dirty look, but did continue with her story. "It's really pretty simple. Uh, as goofy as he is right now, Castle's basically right." She shrugged and gave them a little half-smile.

Esposito looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language. "Come again?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "You guys got what you've been not-so-subtley hinting at for years. Castle and I are together. The rock," she waved her left hand at them for effect, "is from him."

There was silence at the table, pure silence. Nobody moved, except for blinking. Well, Castle did let out a somewhat loud belch, and then said "Whoa! Tha' was a big one, huh? Felt good though. But don' worry, guys. I'll warn ya if I havta fart so you can clear out. Bananas always give me gas, an' Lanie made me eat one in the hos-sip-tol. Those banana farts can get purty smelly, if ya know what I mean," he finished with a little chuckle.

Ignoring Castle because frankly, he'd had enough bathroom-related antics from the man today, Esposito focused on Beckett. After several seconds, he started to nod slowly, saying "Oh, I get it now. You're trying to punk us!"

"No, my farts really _do too_ stink!" Castle protested, sounding a little outraged because he thought Esposito was doubting his claim.

Kate rolled her eyes again, and looked over at Castle. "No, not you. Zip it, Writer Boy. I'm talking now."

But he didn't zip it. Since he had no self-restraint anymore and said anything that came to his mind, her words brought back a memory to the forefront of that mind and he felt compelled to remind her . "No, iss Writer _Monkey_, Kate. Doncha 'member? The stairs an' how you were ha-"

Any further words were cut off by the hand that she'd clamped over his mouth in desperation for him to stop talking before he recount something that was too intensely personal to ever be shared...in the middle of a bar, no less. He tried to mumble a few words through her hand, but when that didn't work, he stopped and looked at her. She leaned toward him and said sternly, "Castle, shut up. Not another word. Because I will hurt you more than you already are if you say one more word before I tell you to. Do you understand?"

He nodded, and she removed her hand from his mouth, but not before telling him one more time, "I mean it, Castle. Hurt. More. _Lots_ more."

When she was satisfied that he was going to keep his mouth shut, she turned back to the other occupants of the table. "No, Esposito, it's the truth. Castle and I are together."

Esposito looked at her, really looked at her. Finally, he sat back in his chair. "Nope. Not buying it. You're trying to mess with us. Sorry, Beckett, but if you and Castle got together, there is just _no way_ that you'd admit it this easily. You've been working together for all these years. We all think there's something going on but you just always deny it. A lot. You date other guys. You send us pictures and tell us all about Dave, here. But now you're sittin' there saying 'oh, yes, Castle and I are hot and heavy now', calm as can be. And we're supposed to believe it? Yeah, right. Like I said before, not buying it."

Rick wasn't saying anything, but he was vigorously nodding his head up and down at Esposito's words. Kate knew he was trying to say, "She's telling the truth!" but she still put a hand on his head to stop the nodding lest he hurt himself any more, while she put her own head in her other hand. Didn't Esposito-hell, everyone in the bar-see them kiss before? Why wasn't that enough of an indicator that they were together? How could telling the truth be this difficult? First, she wanted to tell Lanie, and then Lanie kept avoiding her. Now, she finally was telling them the truth, and they still didn't believe her!

Was she getting a truckload of bad karma for trying to pull this prank in the first place?

* * *

_**Well, this was long. I don't know about it though. It didn't play out exactly the way I intended. I didn't think I liked it and I was going to change it, but then I read it over and I decided to leave it alone for now. So if you all think it's awful and needs to be changed/rewritten, let me know. **_

_**And yes, I know they have all of the clues and they should be able to figure it out. But they're not thinking clearly because they're all just kind of...off about everything (like seeing Castle's naked butt such a short time ago). They're not looking at the big picture yet, and they should be. And they will be, so stay tuned...**_

_**So once again, sorry for not finishing this whole thing in this chapter, but it was already twice as long as one normal chapter so I just couldn't put any more in here.**_

_**I hope you enjoyed it! Feedback would be appreciated.**_


	72. Chapter 72

_**Whew! Once again, I'm glad you liked that last chapter. Thanks so much for all of the reviews and the encouragement. It truly means a lot! A lot of you said the chapter made you laugh, and for that, I'm happy. It's nice to know that 1) I can write something that will bring a smile to someone's face or laughter to them, and 2) my sense of humor isn't so off-the-wall that other people can understand it too. And I do have to admit that despite my uncertainty on this chapter, when I was writing the farting comments, I was kind of laughing too. And I also laughed when I reread it. **_

_**In this chapter, Castle is a little quieter, but he does still have his moments. He makes a...comment; shall we say he blurts out some information which is better kept private? Anyway, the tone I'm going for is from 'Always Buy Retail', when he meets them at the murder scene and says matter of factly, "I had sex with my ex-wife this morning". So keep that in mind when you get to the line. And I know you'll know when you're there.**_

_**I had an incredibly hard time with this chapter. I had part of it done, and I didn't really like it, so I started it again. Then I took some of the old stuff and put it in with the new stuff and trashed a bunch of the old stuff. Then I kept writing, and went back over it and kept editing. And then I couldn't figure out how to end it. Because no matter what, telling the truth would be a bit of a letdown after all of the drama that built up to this point. So I'll apologize in advance if anyone is disappointed.**_

_**Another thing to note: I'm trying to keep to reasonably how things were last November, when I started the story. So if there's any mention of Lanie/Esposito, remember: that scene with Beckett, Castle and Ryan at the end of 'Poof' never happened, nor did the one at the beginning of Setup where Lanie called Esposito 'Baby' and everyone did double-takes.**_

_**This is another long chapter. Really long. Longer than 71, in fact. Hope you like it a little, or at least like some parts.**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Castle or any of the other characters.**_

* * *

Beckett looked at all of her friends that were sitting around the table. Esposito was sitting there with a smug look on his face. Ryan looked thoughtful. And Lanie...Lanie just looked like she was going for a cross between puzzled and pissed off. And she did that look very well. Beckett decided to start again with Esposito, since he was the one who seemed the most skeptical. "Esposito, I don't know how much plainer I can make it. I. Am. Telling. The. Truth. I mean, didn't you see that kiss back there, when Castle laid one on me? Have you ever seen him do that before? Castle. And. I. Are. Together," she finished forcefully.

He didn't say anything, just kept looking smug. Castle started the head-nodding again but blessedly didn't say anything. So she decided to try her luck with Ryan. "Ryan?"

"I don't know, Beckett. Esposito has a point. You were denying that you had a thing for Castle for, like, ever. So now that we finally believe you that you don't, you say you do? And you're together? And he gave you a rock like that? I mean, right...the dude, like, tricked you and kidnapped you and took you to Florida. And you're not mad at him? I mean, what happened to the Beckett we all know and love? By all rights, Castle's body should be in a landfill somewhere for what he pulled. So no, I don't really buy it."

"Oh, I was mad at him all right," she countered, before she realized that what she said just fed into his disbelief. So she clarified, "But I got over it. We talked, and we realized some things, and we're together now."

"You got over it. Yeah, right. You're together. Simple." He let out a huff to indicate that he didn't believe it for a minute. "So where did Dave come from? Why would you go to this elaborate scheme of bringing us all here to meet him? If you're not together, then who cares if we meet him?" Then he realized how that sounded, so he looked at Dave. "No offense, dude." Dave gave a nod and held up his hand as if to say 'no problem.'

But Ryan was on a roll now, and he didn't even give Beckett time to answer before he continued with his thought. "Know what I think?"

She rolled her eyes, and sat back in her chair with a smirk that was usually reserved for Castle's wild theories. "No, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

"I'm getting a picture in my mind. I'm thinking you knew Dave before you went down to Florida. And then you tried to make it seem like you met him down there. I mean, how often do you go on vacation and actually meet someone who's from the same place you are?"

Esposito fist-bumped Ryan when he heard his theory. "Good catch, bro. Hell, Dave was probably with her the whole time. He probably even flew on that private plane with them!" Ryan pointed at Esposito and smiled, as if to say, 'good job'.

"You guys think...I don't believe this." Beckett just shook her head at the guys as they began to spin theories with each other. They weren't even looking at her anymore as they got more 'into' the theory they were building.

"She tells Lanie stuff to make it seem like she's with Castle, and she sent us that picture of her sitting on Castle's lap after the alligator stuff, and then just when we're thinking 'Finally, she and Castle are together,' Boom! She tells Lanie that it's really this Dave, who she _supposedly_ met in Florida," Esposito explained.

"But see," Ryan continued, "We don't believe her right away because of the previous stuff about Castle, that picture and the video. But then there's the pictures of her and Dave, and man, the text about the hot tub," he coughed a bit as he said that, because it was still just...weird to think about Beckett like that. "And we find out that good ol' Dave just happens to be from the city. Riiiiight."

When Ryan paused, Esposito took over. "Yeah. So we're finally believing it's Dave, and she's all gaga over him and then wham! She brings us here and makes it seem like she's getting all moony over Castle, flashin' a rock and liplocking with him." Finally, they were done building the Beckett theory between themselves and turned back to her. "We got it, Beckett. It's like this elaborate back-and-forth punk, Castle-style. You two are just tryin' to pull one over on us tonight, one last time."

"Yeah, we got it figured out. But I have to hand it to you...you were pretty good. Punk of the century, at least until we figured it out. No match for us." After he finished, Ryan turned to Esposito again for another fist bump.

Kate listened to all of it, and then lowered her head to lay it in her hand, closing her eyes. God, how hard could this be? "Geez, guys, that story has so many holes that it's the proverbial swiss cheese. Why would Castle fly me and my alleged boyfriend to Florida? Anyway, you were there when Castle and I left. You know Dave wasn't there. And you were there when we came back. Dave wasn't anywhere around...you know that."

Ryan pondered what she said for a few minutes before breaking into another slight grin, like he had it all figured out again. "Okay, so he flew commercial down there, and on the way back, he was hiding in the plane. After we were all gone, he just hopped off and got a cab or something. He could have easily been hiding; you had Mr. Big there who wouldn't let us even take a look inside the plane, remember? Why else wouldn't he let us on the plane unless there was someone in there that we weren't supposed to see, huh?"

"Good catch, bro," Esposito told him again, and then joked, "You know, you make a pretty good detective. You should look into making a career out of it."

"Why, thanks, man," Ryan joked back, directly to Esposito, like he was forgetting Beckett for the moment. "I think I _will_ do that. Putting puzzles together, figuring out the clues, I guess I do more than an okay job. I wonder if the police could use someone with my skills?"

"Do you girls need some time to discuss your career prospects before you do each other's hair," Beckett interrupted with her usual brand of sarcasm, "or can we get back to our discussion?" The guys turned back to her and leaned forward, trying to look extremely interested. Beckett shook her head at her fellow detectives, pretty much in awe over their wild assumptions. "You...I...Are you going to start spouting CIA conspiracy theories like Castle now? Dave was not on the plane. He was not hiding, and that has nothing to do with why you couldn't look around. It was just-you couldn't, okay?" She didn't know what to say to their bit of logic. And now she wasn't looking in Castle's direction, so she didn't realize that Castle had perked up a bit when he'd heard her mention his name.

"We had sex. On the plane. Twice. The bed wuzzin made."

All eyes whipped to face Castle, as he just sat there after his proclamation, delivered in a deadpan voice for a change, which actually made it even more strange to hear. Luckily, he at least wasn't grinning like a lunatic anymore, but he was just sitting there, staring into space thoughtfully. His comment cued some jaw dropping, wide-eyed stares from the two detectives and the ME, while Dave just gave a low whistle and looked up at the ceiling. Then Castle gave a slight smile, and said, "Ah, good times." What he said first was still enough to make Kate's jaw drop open in shock, and unfortunately she wasn't quick enough before she clamped a hand over his mouth again, not soon enough to prevent everyone from hearing either of his comments.

"Didn't I tell you to not speak until I gave you permission?" He nodded behind her hand. "Good. Now don't forget again or I _will_ make sure that your right eye matches your left." He got a wounded puppy dog look on his face then, but she had no sympathy. "Oh, cut it out, Castle."

This was more embarrassing than the Bieber incident; she _knew_ these people! And he'd just blurted out...oh, man. She did _not_ want to think about that. Reluctantly, she turned her gazes back to the others.

"Okaaaaayyyy, Castle," Ryan was responding, not really wanting him to elaborate on his delusions. Although, Ryan thought, that would be a pretty awesome delusion...having sex on a private plane. Whoa.

"Fine," Kate continued, eager to drop that particular topic of conversation before it went any farther. And luckily, nobody else seemed to have any issue with it; it was apparent that they still thought Castle was imagining things, vividly. So she tried to get them back on track. "Let's forget the plane for a minute. Explain the kiss just now. If I'm involved with Dave...hell, if I'm engaged to Dave, then how could I have kissed Castle like that? How could he have kissed me like that?"

Lanie answered this time. "I'll tell you, girl. But first, I have to say that I was wonderin' what the blue blazes was goin' on with you, 'specially when I hear this one," she cocked her head toward Dave again, "talkin' about his _wife_ before."

The shock on Ryan's and Esposito's faces would have been priceless as they heard the word 'wife'-they hadn't heard what Lanie had heard earlier-if Beckett would have been able to appreciate it, if she hadn't been trying so hard to convince them that she was telling them the truth.

Lanie continued. "So after hearin' Kevin's theory, I have to say that it explains some things. But the kiss? No problem. Castle's mother is an actress, so kissin' someone is probably nothin' to him. And you? Well, I have to say that you seem pretty damn okay bein' the other woman to this guy's wife, although I never woulda pegged you for that, girl. I thought you were better than that. I thought I _knew_ you better than that! Really, if I thought it would do any good, I'd smack you so you'd end up looking like Castle. 'Cuz right now, that man may have more sense than you. But anyway, about the kiss, I guess you figure what's the problem with kissin' someone else, right? You're already sharin'." As Lanie finished, Kate could tell that she was still mad. And it was obvious that she was mad at Kate for apparently getting involved with a married man.

"Lanie, I'm NOT involved with Dave!"

"I should hope not!"

All eyes at the table turned to look at the owner of the voice who had just said that, a blond in scrubs who had walked up to the table. She stopped and smiled at everyone, then bent down and gave Dave a quick kiss. "I really don't like other women being involved with my husband. Doesn't really make for a strong marriage and all of that." Then she turned to Kate and said, "Hi, Kate. Sorry I'm late. Hi, Rick...oh, my," she said as she caught sight of Rick's face, "Rick, did you do flips over a couch again? Looks like the couch won. Did you get that checked out?"

The other three were looking at each other, surprised by the newcomer who seemed so familiar with half of the people sitting at the table. Kate spoke to Joelle quickly, "Yes, he went to the ER and apparently had a CT scan. I guess he looks worse than he evidently is, although you should beware of what comes out of his mouth. Pain meds," she finished while Joelle nodded in understanding, before turning to the others at the table who were looking at them curiously. "Joelle, this is Lanie, Ryan and Esposito. Guys, this is Joelle, _Dave's wife._"

Silence at the table once again reigned supreme. Lanie looked at Joelle and gave her the once-over, and Joelle just smiled back. Ryan looked at Esposito, and Esposito was looking at Dave. Dave was looking at his wife, and he slung an arm around the back of the chair that she was now sitting in next to him. Castle was looking at his hands, and he was folding them in some semblance of the 'Here's the church and here's the steeple' child's game, and that was perfectly fine with Kate as long as he kept his mouth shut and didn't try to share any more of their sex life.

When nobody made a move to say anything, Kate said "Joelle, can you tell me where we met?"

"Standing in line at that ice cream place where we made those sundaes that would feed a small army."

"In what state?"

She looked puzzed at the question, but she answered, "In Florida...?"

"Has your husband ever spent any time alone with me, without you there?"

She thought for a moment, and then said, "Well, that first night when we went to the bar? I think I went to use the ladies room before we left, and you were with him then, but Rick was there too. I think you spent more time alone with Hans and Todd than you did with Dave." She still looked puzzled at the questions. The others perked up and Kate could see that they were wondering about who Hans and Todd were, but that was the last thing she needed to bring up now.

"Joelle, would you mind answering a few questions from the guys or Lanie?"

"Uh...no, as long as they don't ask anything too personal. I mean, I have to have a lot to drink before I'll answer those 'what type of underwear do you have on' questions, especially with people I've just met. But I have to ask...why?"

The two ladies were chatting as if the rest of the table wasn't even there. "I tried to tell them the truth about Rick and me, and they won't believe me. They think I'm really involved with Dave, and that he's some lothario who's married to you and has me on the side." She rolled her eyes.

Joelle's eyes widened in comical surprise. "You...HIM?" she exclaimed, indicating Dave. "Oh, that's priceless!" she said as she let out a laugh.

Lanie got out her phone and tapped the screen several times before she handed it over to Joelle. She really hated to burst this woman's bubble, but sometimes you just had to take the high road no matter what the consequences. "Look," she said simply, turning the phone toward the other woman so she could see the picture of Kate sitting on Dave's lap on the boat.

Joelle took the phone, glanced at the picture, and then handed it back to Lanie. "Yeah, that was a nice shot, wasn't it? It was such a beautiful day."

"You've seen it already?" Lanie asked.

"Seen it? I _took_ it," Joelle confirmed.

Lanie gave her head a little double-take shake and said, "You took a picture of another woman-and not a bad looking one-sittin' on your _husband's lap_?"

"Uh huh," Joelle confirmed again.

Kate sighed. This should have been easy to explain, but by now it had gotten so convoluted that she, herself, was almost confused. So now that she finally had their attention, they all appeard to be relatively quiet, and she was pretty sure she wouldn't be interrupted, she gave them the Reader's Digest condensed version, as boring as it may be. "Castle and I got together several days into the vacation, a few days after my birthday. But we knew you all would be insufferable if you found out...you all were bad enough when we weren't together; we knew you'd have a field day if you found out that we really did get together. We just wanted some peace and some time to get used to the new relationship thing before we had to field a bunch of questions or comments or ribbing about 'us'. So we decided to make it seem like I actually found some other guy down there to throw you off the scent. It was like a bait and switch, with me seeming like I was talking about Castle and me, then springing it on you that it was some other guy. And then we met Dave and Joelle, and Dave just kind of became my 'other guy'. And Joelle took a picture of me and Dave to send to you guys to make our story more viable."

"And you should have seen Dave at first too when they posed for that picture...he was smiling like he had a swordfish shoved up his butt," Joelle laughed. "It was kind of a weird situation to be in, watching the wrong two people act like a couple, right in front of us, but right after that we went back to our correct partners, and then many cannonballs ensued."

Once again, there was pure silence at the table, except for the noises of the bar. Finally, Ryan leaned forward with his elbow on the table, using his hand to point from Castle to Beckett. "So let me get this straight...you two...are, you know-"

"Together? Like, _together_ together?" Esposito finished.

"Yeah." It was now Kate's turn to confirm that they were right, while Joelle sat back. "And you know, it all sounds kind of dry and boring right now. I mean, we had something totally different planned for how we were going to tell you, but then I see Rambo here and got kind of distracted because _nobody called me_," she emphasized, with a pointed glare at Esposito and Lanie, "and then I find out he's the pirate of pain pills and can't keep his mouth shut, and any plan we had just kind of fell apart after that."

Lanie was just sitting there taking this all in, and she hadn't said a word or even altered her facial expression since she asked Joelle about the picture. Finally, Beckett let her gaze rest on her friend and prompted, "Lanie?"

"Yes, Kate?" she responded, and by the tone and by the fact that she used a proper 'Yes, Kate' instead of just the informal 'yeah', Kate knew she was still mad, and that the temper would probably erupt anytime within the next minute or so.

"Don't you have anything to say?"

"You and Writer Boy are together."

"Yes, that's what I've been saying."

"And Dave is..."

"...Happily married to Joelle, and faithful, because if I've learned anything about her, I think if that wasn't the case, he'd end up looking worse than Castle when she got through with him."

"Ain't that the truth!" Dave interjected, and Joelle gave him a swat on the arm.

"So," Lanie continued, "you've been with Castle, hot and heavy, for what? Almost two weeks? Said there was nothing going on between you, that it was all Dave. The hot tub...was that real?" Lanie asked, piercing Kate with her gaze after that. Kate, remembering the text and the activities that surrrounded the text, blushed and nodded in response. "Girl, I don't know if I should hug you for finally coming to your senses and giving you and Castle a chance, or smack you into next week for lying to me to my face."

"Lanie, I have to point out to you that I never lied to you to your face. And I tried to tell you the truth."

"_What_?" Now the temper was starting to show through. "Nuh-uh, girl," she continued, waving her right index finger in front of Kate. "You sat right there in your apartment last night, spinnin' some sappy story about that rock that you're wearin', gettin' all moony about Dave there. Right in front of my face. Nice acting, girlfriend," she finished sarcastically.

"Wait a minute!" Esposito chimed in, his statement directed at Lanie. "You _knew_ about the ring last night? And you didn't tell me?"

Through clenched teeth, Lanie told him, "Not _now_, Javier!" Kate looked at them, prepared to use the information later if she needed it. So Lanie _was_ with Esposito!

"Lanie." Beckett closed her eyes and tried to make sure she was in control before she spoke again. When she opened her eyes, she raised an eyebrow at her friend as if to say 'busted'. "I'll be nice and temporarily set aside the little confirmation we just got from Esposito, here, that you were indeed together last night." She paused and let that sink in for a minute. "But back to the point about _our_ conversation last night, I never expected you to find the ring. When I walked back into the room and saw you holding it, I was absolutely shocked and I just thought...assumed...that somehow you knew. I honestly thought you'd figured out the ring was from Castle, and that's who I was talking about the whole time when I told you the story. And the story was true, by the way. Then we started talking about you and Esposito, and you got the call from Perlmutter, and you just practically raced out of there. And then you made that comment about Dave right as you were leaving and I realized you thought I was talking about Dave all along. And I figured out later that we'd never used any proper names, and we each thought we were talking about the same person, but it turns out we weren't." She paused and reached out to put a hand over Lanie's. "Honey, as soon as you were gone, Rick and I talked and we agreed to tell you the truth. When I was face to face with you, I couldn't keep up the charade anymore. But then," she raised an eyebrow at Lanie as her tone changed a bit, "you started avoiding me."

Lanie sputtered just a tiny bit before saying, "I was not avoiding you. I was...busy." She tried to sound indignant.

"Give me a break, Lanie. I left you a message _last night_!" She looked at Esposito, who was still staring at them, just observing the conversation. "Tell me, Esposito, just how busy _was_ she last night that she couldn't call me back? Huh?" He sat up a little straighter and gave her a deer-in-the-headlights look before nervously glancing at Lanie. But Kate didn't give him a chance to answer and turned back to Lanie. "Last night, Lanie. And this, right now, is the first time we've been able to talk? What about when you saw me outside of the elevator this morning and ran away? Now who's lying to whom, huh?"

She looked away from Lanie, thinking it would be a good idea to give her a chance to think for a few minutes, and addressed the guys. "Guys, look at Rick. The man is incapable of carrying out any sort of subterfuge or even telling a little white lie at this point. Esposito, did he say anything to you at the hospital about me?"

"God," Lanie answered for him as Esposito got a pained look on his face. So much for thinking for a few minutes. "What _didn't_ that man say, about you or anyone else? We heard all about how he 'juss loves you, ya know?' Of course, we all thought it was the pain pills bringing out some deep, hidden feelings. And then the latest thing, unrelated to you, was how he tried to have a peeing contest with Javi."

"Oh, _Javi_, is it?" Kate chided, ignoring the contest comment, as Lanie looked surprised at her 'oops'.

Esposito looked at Lanie and leaned over to her. He spoke in a low tone, but they could still all hear. "Chica, they know."

"Come ooooonnn, Lanie. Embrace the love! Weee did!" Castle said suddenly, putting his arms around Kate and squeezing her, while planting a sloppy kiss on her cheek. Pulling back, he added, "I alrea'y tol' you how you two juss look soooo cuuuuuute together." Kate turned to look at him while swiping at her cheek. "Oops!" he said dramatically. "I talked, dint I? Are you gonna hurt me now?"

As she glared at him, she rolled her eyes. "I'll let that one slide," she told him softly. And then, even more softly still, she continued, "But don't you dare say anything else about bikinis or any other...private things. Got it, Castle?"

"Aye, aye, Cap'n. Oops, I guess i' would be aye, aye, d'tective. You're not a cap'n yet. But, ya know-"

"Castle?" Kate interrupted before he could go off on a tangent.

"Yeah?"

"Did we talk last night about me telling Lanie the truth about us?" She spoke a little louder so everyone could hear her clearly.

"Uh huh. You said you wan'ed t' teller 'bout us b'fore t'night."

"Are you telling the truth?" she asked him, mainly for Lanie's benefit.

"Of courssssse! Truth is strangerrr 'n fiction, affer all. 'N iss fun to be strange, ev'n though I write tha' fiction stuff. So if I wanna be strange, then I havta tell the truth, right?"

Kate, not bothering to answer Castle, turned to Lanie. "See, he can't lie. He even said he likes to be strange, which we _know_ is absolutely the truth, coming from him. I _was_ going to tell you about us. You would have known a full day ago, if you would have called me back."

Lanie tried to glare at Kate, but Kate just glared right back at Lanie. Neither said anything until they were interrupted by Esposito. "God, will the two of you just cut it out? Chica," he said to Lanie, "You know you didn't want to talk to her because you thought she was going to grill you about us. So admit it. It was pretty obvious anyway." He turned to Kate. "But Beckett, I think you're truly evil. You got news like this? You and Castle? And you keep it from us? And not only that, you make us think you're gettin' it on with someone else?"

"Nice men's room vernacular, Esposito," she chided, giving him a glare. "But really, Esposito, be as truthful as Castle, okay? How many pools or bets do you have going about me and Castle? And don't insult me by trying to deny their existence."

The question was loaded, and he didn't want to even get into that with her. But he knew Beckett, and knowing Beckett, he knew she would find out, somehow, if he didn't tell her. And if he didn't tell her, he knew there would be hell to pay.

"Five. But two of them are just between me and Ryan and Lanie."

"Esposito, are there any pools going on about you?"

He looked confused. "Me? Why would someone want to put together a pool for me?"

"Exactly." She addressed Lanie. "Lanie, how many pools are out there with you as the topic?"

"Girl, I think you know the answer to that." She sighed, knowing where Kate was going with this line of questioning.

"Ryan?"

He put his hands up in the air in a surrender type of move. "None."

"So none of you have any, yet I'm evidently so popular that there are five pools concerned with my personal life. Is it any wonder why we made up a story? And, Esposito, I didn't exactly see you and Lanie hanging up banners around the precinct advertising your new relationship."

"We were just..." Esposito started to say, trying to defend his and Lanie's goal to keep the relationship a little bit hidden. But then he knew that his reasons for keeping things quiet were almost the same as Beckett's and Castle's reasons. "It was...we work together!"

"Uh huh." She raised an eyebrow at him. Like, she and Castle _didn't_ work together?

"Officially!" Lanie interjected, obviously being able to tell what she was thinking.

"Whether he's 'official' or not is really irrelevant. The point is that for some reason our private life tends to be fodder for everyone's betting impulses. So we decided to put a little crimp in that."

"And you did," Ryan concurred.

"So now you know about us. We're together-"

"An' we're gettin' marrrrieeeeeed!" HappyCastle interrupted, holding up her hand. "Hey, when 'r we gettin' marrrrieeeed?"

Beckett turned to look at him, taking in the giddy look on his face and the still somewhat-glazed eyes. "Not until you're sober, that's for sure," she remarked dryly. She turned back to the others. "So, as I was saying, now you know about us. We're together. It's done. Get over it. And no more betting on us or I'm going to start a pool about who will be tortured the most by me if I find you doing any more betting about our relationship. Got it?"

"Geez, you're no fun, Beckett," Ryan pouted, leaving Beckett to wonder if he'd been taking lessons from Castle.

Esposito, sensing that the heavy part of the conversation was done, signaled a waiter over to the table. "Hey, we need some drinks. We _can_ at least give you and Castle a toast, can't we, Beckett?"

She gave Esposito a nod and a slight smile. "That would be nice, Esposito. But toast or no toast, if I get wind of any more pools, I _will_ torture you."

They ordered their drinks, although Kate changed Rick's drink order to a kiddie cocktail after he tried to order something with alcohol. "Not with the pain meds, hotshot."

"Awww...izzun she sweeeeet?" he asked the table in general. "She takes good care o' me."

"Maybe next time you should remember that when you get taken to the hospital. You know, like to _call_ me!" she chided Rick,

"Uh oh, looks like trouble in paradise alreadyyyy..." Ryan said under his breath to Esposito.

"Ten bucks says he's groveling pretty good the next time we see him," Esposito replied automatically, but then sneaked a look at Beckett, who had caught what he said and was now glaring at him. "Gotcha, Beckett. Sorry, couldn't resist."

But everyone turned to Lanie when they heard her loudly exclaim, "Oh, my God!" Her voice was high and forceful and caused everyone to shrink back in their chairs a bit, wondering what was coming next.

"What?" several voices said in unison.

"I've been so caught up with Castle and that random doo doo that's been flowin' outta his mouth, and Dave, and Dave havin' a wife, and everyone finding out about me and Javi, that I just fully realized that _you two finally hooked up_! For real!" she finished, looking at Kate with a shocked expression that had quickly morphed into one of glee as she spoke. "You guys are really, really together! Oh, my God! Finally, girl!"

Kate had to laugh. The change in Lanie from the suspicious, annoyed woman to this giddy, happy woman was quite a switch, and the transformation was funny. "Geez, Lanie! Did you pop one of Castle's happy pills and it just kicked in?" she asked her friend, as Lanie hopped up and was rounding the table toward Kate.

Kate barely got turned around in her chair before Lanie swooped her into a big hug. "Do you know how long we've all been waiting for you to get your freak on with Writer Boy?"

Kate pulled back and looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "Lanie, it's just slightly creepy that it seems like you've been waiting around for me to get my jollies with Castle."

"An' Lanie?" Castle tried to clarify. "Iss Writer _Man_. Or Writer _Monkey_. B'cuz you know, there was this one time that Kate, here, was-"

His words were cut off by the hand that clamped over his mouth. "Remember, Castle?" He nodded with her hand still on her mouth.

Esposito chimed in, "See, Chica? I told you it was weird." To everyone else, he clarified, "When she thought...uh, the first time...that you'd gotten together, it was like she was high or something. She was giggling and it was..." he trailed off, realizing that he'd be in trouble very soon if he didn't cut it out now; Lanie would _not_ appreciate it if he told everyone how hot they'd been that night after she'd gotten Beckett's text about the hot tub. "Uh, she was pretty happy," he muttered, finishing his thought as he caught Lanie staring at him.

After glaring at her newly-outed significant other, she swooped in to give Kate another hug. "You two are just so _cute_ together!" Then she sat down in her chair again just as the bartender brought the drinks. When the drinks were served, Lanie raised her glass to all of them and proposed a toast. "To Beckett and Castle. And hopefully, to the end of all of the unresolved sexual tension and the eye sex between these two, now that they're obviously gettin' the real thing," Lanie said with typical Lanie sass amidst chuckles from the others sitting around the table. But then she added, "And if Castle can be believed, even on planes."

"Lanie!" Kate gasped, embarrassed.

"Yup," Castle said, nodding, after taking a sip of his kiddie cocktail. "Twice."

With some finely-honed fast reflexes garnered from her survival instinct, her elbow shot out and connected with Castle's abdomen, which resulted in him emitting a little "humph" sound as the breath left his lungs. She looked at him and said through clenched teeth, "Didn't I warn you about keeping your mouth shut about private things?"

When he could talk again, he looked at her, brows furrowed, as he explained, "But I already said somethin' about it b'fore so it wassin private anymore."

She was trying to figure out how to explain decorum to him in words he could understand (and actually remember in this state) when he stood up suddenly and announced. "I gotta pee. Come on, Ryan. Let's go."

Ryan looked over at Castle. "Huh? Where? What?"

"I tol' you. I gotta pee. So come on."

"Why do I have to go? Because I don't have to go. So you go."

"Nah. Girls always go to the res'room in bunches. So I wanna too."

"But I don't-"

"Ryan, just go with him, okay?" Beckett suggested. Then she clarified, "Try to make sure he doesn't walk into any walls or anything."

"But I heard what he said about the bananas," he reminded Beckett, obviously hesitant. "I mean, dude, I do not wanna-"

"Ryan, I'll get you some air freshener, okay? Just go with him."

Muttering something under his breath, Ryan got up and began to follow Castle toward the bathroom, poking him now and then to keep him on track so he didn't veer off course. After they were out of earshot, Esposito couldn't hold in the laughter any longer. "Damn, I can't wait to see what Castle tries this time. Poor Ryan."

Lanie nodded sympathetically, having witnessed the bathroom episode at the hospital and knowing what poor Ryan was in for. "So anyway, while they're gone, start telling us about your trip. The public parts, anyway. I think we heard enough of the private parts from Castle already."

"Gee, Lanie, thanks for reminding me," Kate said sarcastically. But she turned to Joelle and Dave. "Should we tell them about the boat?" Then she had a thought. "Hey, Dave, do you still have that video of Rick from the boat?" He immediately nodded and smiled, knowing what she was talking about; the dive contest where Castle landed with a splat on his belly.

"Good, then let's go through this boat ride..."

* * *

_**There you are. Like I said, I had a real problem with this chapter, and that's why it took me such an eternally long time to post. Sorry! Call it a creative blockage. I needed some Drano for my writing brain.**_

_**I hope it didn't stink too badly. I estimate that I have a few more chapters to go; we need to get Castle home somehow. Can't end the story with him all loopy and everything.**_

_**Thank you for reading!**_


	73. Chapter 73

_**I know in the last chapter's a/n I said how this story was started last November and I'm trying to keep to that timeline. Well, as soon as I said that, I went and threw a monkey wrench in things. I reference something in this chapter-a song-that wasn't around yet last November. So even though the timeline is off, I hope you'll forgive me. It's all AU anyway.**_

_**Second, I know I may be pushing the HappyCastle thing. Some of you may be getting sick of HappyCastle. But the last chapter ended when Ryan went into the bathroom with him, and I just couldn't resist writing about that. Personally, pain meds don't make me loopy, but I've heard of other people that have said and done some strange stuff. And Castle is just off-the-wall enough anyway that if you lower his inhibitions, well...who knows what you'd get. So if you don't want to read about HappyCastle's bathroom antics, then just scroll down to after the section break and skip the first part. And if you read it and don't like it...well, then I'll just say 'I told you so.'**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone. But I'm anxiously awaiting Season 4, especially since they started filming last week! Yeah!**_

* * *

Kate, Joelle and Dave had been filling the others in on their boating adventures while Castle and Ryan were in the restroom. Dave found the video on his phone and they took turns watching it and passing it to the next person. Kate even took a look, and even though it had just happened last week, as she watched it, she felt a brief wave of nostalgia for her now-finished getaway. The whole trip was so unexpected, but she'd come back with a completely different outlook, with her life changed dramatically during that time in ways she never would have imagined a month ago. But sitting here now, she wouldn't change a thing, except for maybe to have stuffed a sock in Rick's mouth before he started oversharing tonight.

Esposito had been shooting worried glances toward the restroom since a few minutes after Castle and Ryan had left the table. Though one other man had hurriedly exited the restroom, Castle and Ryan had not reappeared. Finally, right after the other man left, Beckett had had enough, and her curiousity was getting the best of her. "Okay, Esposito, spill. You keep looking at the bathroom like you're wondering if you should call in the SWAT team or not. What...you think Castle's going to flush himself down the toilet?"

Esposito and Lanie looked at each other. Finally, Esposito said, "Castle, on happy drugs, in a bathroom, is not an experience for the faint of heart."

"Huh?" Kate asked, not really understanding.

Lanie took over. "Honey, in that hospital, I got to see a lot more of your man than I ever thought I would. Than I ever needed to."

"Plain english, Lanie," Kate requested.

She sighed. "He dropped his pants like a two-year-old and mooned me and half of the ER-"

"No!" Kate exclaimed, her mouth dropping open in shock before a smile started to overtake her face as the image began to form in her mind.

"Unfortunately, yes. But that was nothing compared to how he tried to get up close and personal with Javi."

"I'm not sure I want to know, but tell me anyway," she urged, trying to keep a straight face.

"Peeing contest. He wanted Javier to pee with him to see who could make the most bubbles," Lanie told her. Lanie sighed, but then she smiled, because despite the embarrassment for Esposito, the whole thing was damn funny now-especially Esposito's reaction.

"Oh, my God." Then she sobered up and turned to Esposito. "Was it good for you, Esposito? Did you enjoy going mano-a-mano in a manliness contest with Rick?" She couldn't keep the smirk off of her face after uttering the words.

"Beckett, that question is wrong on so many levels," he replied in a low voice, narrowing his eyes at her. "Especially considering the literal translation. But no, I declined to participate. You can have him all to yourself. And keep him from flashin' his ass in front of my woman, okay?"

She raised an eyebrow at him, "Worried she liked what she saw, Esposito?"

"It's wrong, Beckett, just so many levels of wrong," he said again, shaking his head.

Then Kate noticed that Joelle was trying to hold in some laughter. Knowing she was a trauma nurse, Kate asked her, "Is this normal?"

"Honey, I've seen worse. Most of them just sleep a lot, but every once in a while, you get a reaction like this. But when you know the person, it's still damn funny. And just remember, you have good blackmail material for later." Kate nodded; Joelle did have a point.

Kate turned to Dave. "Do guys really do this stuff?" Dave looked a little unnerved by the question.

"No comment."

"Good answer, bro," Esposito interjected, backing him up, remembering how Lanie asked him the same question in the hospital.

As Esposito finished answering, he noticed Ryan hurrying back to the table, a shell-shocked look on his face. As he walked, he cast a few furtive glances behind him toward the bathroom. When he reached the table, he collapsed into his chair and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"Something wrong, Ryan?" Lanie asked.

He opened his mouth a few times and started to talk, but obviously couldn't formulate a full coherent sentence right away. "I went...Castle...oh, man. He just...the zipper...I though he was gonna pinch it, like that movie...I told him to knock it off...it's a public place...then he started...oh, man." He pressed his fingers to his eyes before he finished. "That was even worse than when that ex of mine wanted me to have sex in a coffin."

"You left him in there? Alone?" Esposito asked.

"Man, I deserve a medal for lasting as long as I did. Weaker people would have been outta there when he started using the zipper of his pants as a musical instrument."

Dave leaned forward. "Do tell. This sounds like it's going to be good."

Ryan took a deep breath. "Are you sure you wanna hear this? I mean, mixed company and all."

"Ryan," Beckett said, "Joelle is a nurse and I just spent two weeks with Castle. I think we can handle it."

"Okay, fine, if you think you can handle the horrid truth. So we go in there and he starts fumbling with his belt. I mean, I did my thing and he's still messin' around with his belt. And Esposito, before you ask, _no_, I wasn't going to help him. I went in the damn bathroom with him, but I draw the line at helping him with the belt. But then he finally gets it undone and then man! Eye pain! The guy just drops trou. All the way down to the floor...everything. Man, that was more of Castle than I ever wanted to see."

"Told ya," Lanie said to Kate. She could sympathize with Ryan.

"Then he took a leak. Now, mind you, after the unexpected full moon, I turned away so I wasn't watching. Didn't need to see any more of that. But you know how I know that he did his thing? Because I heard color commentary of it. And when I say _color_ _commentary_, I mean _color _commentary. I heard great detail about color, velocity-although he had a hard time actually saying the word 'velocity'. Bubbles. Apparently, I'm mean and 'no fun' because I'm just like 'Spozzzito'"-he did an imitation of how HappyCastle slurred Esposito's name- "and I wouldn't pee with him to try to make bubbles?" His voice held a puzzled tone. "I haven't seen anyone so thrilled with making pee bubbles since Jenny's nephew was telling me about it when he was potty-training. But that kid was two!"

"I feel your pain, bro," Esposito told him in a commiserating tone. Kate's face, as Ryan recounted his tale, was a mix of horror, embarrassment, and outright amusement.

"I just can't believe you knew he was like this and what I was in for, and you didn't warn me. That's just cruel, man. Cruel."

"Well, it looks like you came out pretty much unscathed, except for the mental images of him dropping his pants, which unfortunately, I share with you," Lanie told him.

"You think that was it? God, I wish."

"There's more?" Lanie asked in surprise.

"There's more. Beckett, you two are _so_ going to owe me for this."

"I'm sure Rick will pay for your counseling. Now, though I'm not sure I really want to know, what else did he do?" Kate asked.

"So when he finishes trying to be a human bubble machine and disses me for not participating, he finally pulls up his pants. Thank God. But then it would appear that he started feeling a little bit musical or something. He's zipping up the fly on his pants and it made, you know, a zipper sound." Ryan looked to the ceiling and sighed, then he looked back at the people at the table, lowering his voice as he started speaking again. "So then he unzips his fly, and rezips it again really fast. And he goes "Hey, Ryan, thass a really neat sound!'" Ryan's voice switched to the HappyCastle impersonation again, but then he went back to his own voice for the rest of the story. "So I get this flashback to that movie...you know the one, with Ben Stiller...the one where he got his, um, you know, caught in the zipper?"

When Ryan mentioned the movie and that specific scene from the movie, Dave's face grimaced while he shifted uncomfortaly in his seat, Beckett's mouth dropped open, Lanie and Joelle gave little gasps, and Esposito said "Dude...no," while shaking his head.

"Yeah, but no, not that. But I was worried about that with the way he kept yanking the thing up and down. So there's this other guy that came in there when he'd just finished up with the bubble thing. So Castle starts in on the zipper, and the guy is trying to ignore him, but then hey, like I said, Castle got musical or something."

"Musical?" Esposito wondered if he'd heard right.

"Yeah. Katy Perry."

"Katy Perry?" Beckett asked.

"Yeah. So I'm trying to get him out of the bathroom, or at least get him to wash his hands, you know? And he just keeps yanking on his zipper. I mentioned something about the thing from the movie and I told him to be careful, but all he can do is say what a cool sound it was. Then he starts yanking it and humming."

"Humming?" Someone asked when he paused in his story.

"Yeah, humming. E.T. Then it turned into singing. So he's yanking his zipper up and down and he's singing the refrain...you know..." But then he went silent.

"Know what?" Esposito prompted.

"Dude, you're gonna make me say it, aren't you?"

"Well, since I'm not sure what part you're talking about-and because this could be good-yeah...sure. Say it." He got a gleam in his eye. "Or rather, _sing_ it."

"Beckett?" he looked to her for some help.

"Sorry, Ryan. Given the events of tonight, specific Katy Perry lyrics are escaping my memory right now. You're going to have to spell it out."

"Guys, come on. Don't you listen to the radio?" He was just met with four stares, which told him to get on with it.

"Fine, you know...and remember he's yanking his zipper up and down...context and everything," he reminded them, but after taking a fortifying breath, started to sing the refrain to E.T., albeit very softly:

"_Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me_

_Infect me with your love and_

_Fill me with your poison_"

Beckett put a hand over her mouth as she said disbelievingly, "No..." when Ryan stopped singing.

"You made me sing the song out here in the bar and now you don't believe me? Come on, Beckett! Have a little pity! You think I could make this up? You know what he's been like-"

"No, Ryan! Unfortunately, I do believe you. The 'no' was me emitting my disbelief that his behavior could get worse." And she lowered her head to her hands for a moment.

"Hate to burst your bubble, Beckett, but that isn't the worst of it." He paused for a dramatic effect, but before she could say anything, he continued. "So that guy who was in there with us? When Castle started singing, I mean, the guy couldn't help but look. So Castle sees this guy, and then he says to the guy, 'Hey, you should try it! Iss a really good time!' And then he starts yanking his zipper and singing 'Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me' to the guy. I'm trying to stop him but he just wouldn't shut up. And then the guy got this look on his face like Castle was a perv or something. I mean he looks scary like that anyway, but then when you add in Katy Perry and the zipper...the guy practically ran out of the bathroom."

"I saw that guy. He was moving pretty fast," Esposito remembered.

"Yeah." Ryan shook his head. "Man, you owe me. Do you realize the flashbacks that I'm gonna have whenever I hear a Katy Perry song?" he asked rhetorically.

"Ryan?" Kate asked then.

"Yeah. And please don't tell me you didn't quite catch the song. I am _not_ singing again."

"No, once was enough, thanks. But where's Rick?"

"I left him in the bathroom. Told him to wash his hands and use a lot of soap. Because it made bubbles. Figured the mention of the bubbles would keep him entertained for a while."

Joelle interrupted, "Dave, I think it's your turn. You're the only guy left here, and it sounds like Esposito and Ryan have put in their time. Go get Rick out of the bathroom."

Dave got a brief look of uncertainty on his face, but slowly got up, obviously not wanting to protest in front of these people he'd just met. And, of course, his wife did have a point-they needed a guy to go into the men's room. So he got up and headed for the restroom, muttering, "He'd better keep his pants up, that's all I have to say."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

When Dave was gone to get Rick in the restroom, the remaining occupants of the table just stared at each other for a few minutes. Then lips quivered, and smiles appeared, and laughter was heard. "We are going to have _so_ much blackmail material for Castle now," Esposito deduced.

"Hey, guys, go easy on him, huh? I think he already got punished enough by the guy that hit him."

The table fell silent once again, until Joelle leaned forward and grabbed Kate's left hand. "I've been watching this thing sparkle, and I know it wasn't there a few days ago, so dish."

Kate followed Joelle's gaze, and a smile lit her lips before she could stop it. "He gave it to me in Florida, totally shocked me and freaked me out. He said he wanted me to know that he was committed to us, and that's where he wanted us to go eventually. And that he knew I wasn't ready right then, and he wanted to make sure I knew how he felt and whenever I felt the same way, I should start wearing the ring."

"Awww...that's sweet! And now you're wearing the ring, so-"

"Wait a minute!" Lanie's voice boomed, interrupting Joelle. "You mean that thing is _real_? You mean it's not just a prop or something...part of that prank that you were pulling? Like the pictures of you and Dave on the boat?"

Kate stared at Lanie like she'd lost her mind. "Part of the prank? No! Lanie, it's real! We talked about it all last night! Are you slow tonight or something? I explained everything _last night_!"

"But I thought...you went on about Dave..."

"No, _you_ went on about Dave, even when I tried to tell you otherwise. Didn't you hear Castle's 'we're gettin' marrieeeeed'?"

"Well, yeah, sure, but I thought that was just Castle bein' happy an' goofy on those drugs."

"Lanie, _I'm_ the one wearing the ring and I'm totally sane and unimpaired." She looked at Ryan and Esposito, who were sitting there with some look of surprise on their features too. "Don't tell me you guys thought it was fake too?"

"Beckett," Esposito answered, "after being with Castle in the bathroom today, I don't think either of us was ready for any more surprises, so if I can speak for Ryan, I'd say we were just going to wait it out and see what happened." Ryan nodded.

Lanie, eyes big, looked at Kate. "You're really, seriously _engaged_?"

Kate smiled, and said simply, "Yes."

With awe, Lanie said, "You're going to marry Richard freaking Castle. My God. When?" Lanie started to look agitated, like she was going to be late for the wedding.

Kate laughed. "Settle down, Lanie. I put on the ring because I'll marry him, someday. Not anytime soon, so you can sit down and you don't have to worry about going dress shopping with me quite yet." Her face got a little more serious. "It's just...after that case today, I realized that I knew that yes, I wanted to marry the big oaf, even if it wasn't anytime soon. So I put the ring on. It just means we're committed...and it does _not _mean that we're hopping a flight to Vegas to find the first Elvis impersonator who could hitch me to my hunka hunka burnin' love." She said the last part in her Billy-impersonation voice, which just kind of slipped out, but she only promised Rick she wouldn't use it again, and he wasn't back from the bathroom yet, so she figured she was safe.

Then she realized that nobody was saying anything; they were just staring at her. "Uh, Beckett?" Ryan asked, eyes wide. "What the hell was that that just came out of your mouth?"

A tad embarrassed after she remembered that none of these people lived through the Billy/Ginny drama, she just leveled one of her trademark glares on Ryan and responded, "Focus, Ryan. I'm getting married." Then as she heard herself, she shook her head. "Man, that still sounds weird. but it's true." Ryan started to open his mouth, but some movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. It was Rick, coming out of the bathroom, followed by Dave. Rick was yawning as he was walking, and Dave had his hand clamped on Rick's shoulder, steering him toward the table.

"So?" Esposito asked Dave.

"Just fine. But thanks for the warning, Ryan," he finished softly.

Ryan leaned closer to Dave and asked "Any Katy Perry lingering in the bathroom?"

Dave responded, "Nah. He saw me and said I 'juss hadta hear somethin'.' But I just said nonchalantly that Katy Perry songs give me a migraine, so I hoped it wasn't a Katy Perry song. He looked all disappointed, but then he showed me all of the bubbles he could make with the soap. The dude hands are probably so clean by now that he could do surgery."

Ryan whistled and then gave Dave a clandestine knuckle-bump. "Man, you're good."

Dave gave a smug nod to Ryan before turning to Kate. "Hey, Kate? Much as we'd like to continue this little reunion, I think we should make it another time. Rambo, here, seems like he's fading pretty fast." He nudged his head toward Rick, who was yawning again.

Joelle concurred. "Let us know when he's back to, uh, normal. Although this has been entertaining for the rest of us, I'm sure it'll take him a few days to feel like he's up to doing much more than laying around or sleeping. And, hey? Call me if he does anything unusual. Well, unusual for him. You know what I mean."

Kate stood up and gave Joelle and then Dave quick hugs. "Thanks for coming, you two. I'm just sorry it didn't turn out like we'd planned."

"Don't worry about it. We'll do it another time, and then we can sit here and laugh and tell Rick all of the funny stuff that he said. And by the way, congratulations!" Joelle told her.

After the couple had left, Kate was soon to follow. She nudged Rick where he sat in the chair, and it was true he was fading fast. "Come on, Big Rick, let's get you home to bed," she told him as she tried to help him out of the chair.

"Oooo, Big Rick. I could get useta you callin' me that. And I liiike the sound of the bed," he droned in a tired voice.

Beckett just rolled her eyes as she helped him out of the bar and out to her car. The others offered to help, but she declined, telling them that she managed him for the last two weeks-she could managed to get him home. She gave Lanie a quick hug. Lanie had finally recovered a bit and said in her trademark cutesy voice, "Oh, you two are so cute together! An' you're gettin' married!" But then she lowered it and said "But girl, we are still gonna have a talk about this little prank of yours. Don' think you're off the hook that easy."

After Beckett herded Castle out the door, the remaining three sat and looked at each other, grins slowly overtaking their faces. "Beckett and Castle," Esposito said.

"Totally gettin' their freak on," Lanie replied.

"Yeah. On a plane," Ryan said, and then shuddered. "Ugh...gotta stop talking about that. It's like that whole parental thing..."

"Yeah," agreed Esposito.

They were all silent for a minute, and then Ryan looked up from his drink with a sly smile on his face. "So when do you think mom and dad are gonna give us a new baby brother or sister?"

* * *

_**That's it for now. Still not done, but close. I'm going to get them back to the loft, and we have to have Alexis make an appearance. Hope you all enjoyed it.**_

_**I just have to say 'hi' and 'welcome' to the new people who have been catching up with the story, so Hi! And Welcome! And thanks for the reviews along the way...it really is fun to still see people reacting to and enjoying the earlier chapters.**_

**_***ETA: After reading several of the reviews, I will put you all out of your misery and I'll tell you that I won't end this story without Castle having his full mental faculties back. That wouldn't be any fun and also wouldn't be a very satisfying ending for the story. _**


	74. Chapter 74

_**We're back! Big, huge, wonderful thanks to everyone who takes the time to review. I know that it's sometimes hard to find something eloquent to say, or to find a different way to say that you're enjoying what I wrote. So thank you-I do very much appreciate the comments.**_

_**I was reading the reviews from the earlier chapters, just to refresh myself with what people liked about the story way back then. And it's funny because I have (almost) an entirely different set of people who leave me comments now, in these recent chapters, than the people who left me comments before. It's really interesting. I hope everyone is still enjoying the story even though it's just won't die. And, that said, I'm thinking that at max, it should be wrapped up in no more than 3 or 4 more chapters. **_

_**Note to 'Blizzard' readers: I have not given up on 'Blizzard'. I WILL finish 'Blizzard'. But I decided that I wanted to put this fic to bed before I did that. And of course, it's just not finishing as quickly as I'd anticipated. But rest assured, I'm trying, and I will get back to 'Blizzard' eventually.**_

_**Disclaimer: Still, even now, don't own anyone. Bummer. **_

* * *

As Beckett drove to the loft, she kept sneaking sideways glances at Castle. Since he'd come out of the bathroom, he'd been unusually quiet and compliant. To be honest, it worried her. It would have worried her under normal circumstances, but now with him like this, when she didn't know what she could expect, it worried her even more.

He just sat there, staring straight ahead as she drove, although he let his hand rest lightly on her thigh, as if he just needed some contact with her. To be honest, she liked it there; she was grateful for the contact after the cold-turkey, Castle-free last 24 hours that she'd just had, and especially after finding out that he was injured during those 24 hours. But he just sat there, staring, quiet. He didn't look like he was in pain, but he didn't look terribly 'with it' either. She could usually read his moods; she knew when he was joking, when he was serious. She knew now, especially after the past week, when he was content, when he wanted her, and even when he just needed to be close to her. But she couldn't figure out this mood, and it surprised her at just how bothered she was by _not_ being able to read him.

As they stopped at a stop light, she let her hand drop from the wheel and used it to cover his hand that was laying on her thigh. At her touch, his hand immediately turned so he could grasp her hand. As his fingers tightened over hers, she looked sideways at him, to find him still staring straight ahead, but with a slight smile on his face.

"How are you feeling?" she asked him, breaking the silence in the car.

"Fiiiine," he replied after a few seconds. "Iss nice here, juss you 'n me."

She'd briefly wondered if his pain pills might be wearing off, and that's why he'd been so quiet, but that thought flew out the window as soon as he'd spoken. So she just answered him, truthfully, even though his statement didn't really require an answer. "Yeah, it is." She smiled over at him, and as if sensing it, he turned to her and smiled back, a goofy, drugged-up, yet endearing smile.

Luckily, she registered the disappearance of the red glow of the traffic light in front of her as it switched to green. She turned her face back to the road and accellerated through the intersection. They were close to Castle's loft, so nothing else was said until he told her to pull into his underground parking garage.

"Is there a free spot for me?"

"There iss now. Took care of it today."

"Took care of what?"

"Got you yer own parkin' space."

Her own parking space? At his loft? "Castle...that's...you shouldn't have-

"Oh, shuddup, Beckett. You're gonna be here alot now, so I dint wan' you to havta park somewhere else. This is more covee...coneev...covvv...iss juss easier. So shuddup about it, 'kay?"

But they were at the entrance to the garage now, so she had no choice but to pull in. She stopped at the gate and before she could say much of anything, the attendant had opened the gate and waved her through. Obviously, Castle wasn't imagining getting her a space, and it had been prearranged with the attendants. Her immediate instinct was to protest and resist, but she realized that it would be _so_ much more convenient, as Castle had been attempting to say. And now, the close proximity would be a godsend when she had to try to get him upstairs.

She told Castle to wait in the car and told him she had to get her bag out of the trunk. She did, but she quickly dialed Alexis' cell phone.

"Hello?"

"Alexis, it's Kate. Beckett," she identified, supplying her last name, just in case. She didn't want to be too presumptuous.

"Detective Beckett...hi." The girl sounded okay, not mad, but puzzled. "Dad's not here. But you're calling my phone..." She was thinking out loud, but then her manners kicked in. "Is there something that I can help you with?"

"Yes, um, it's about your dad, and I wanted to warn you before you saw him."

"Why? What did he do now?" she sounded blase, like she expected that he got arrested or something.

"I don't know all of the details, exactly, but in a nutshell, your dad got punched out in a fight."

"Oh, my God!" There was instant alarm in the girl's voice. "Is he hurt? How bad is he?"

"Alexis, I'll explain it all in a few minutes. We're in your garage downstairs and we'll be up really quickly. I just wanted to warn you because he's pretty banged up and bruised. I didn't want to blindside you when you saw him like this." Like I was, she added silently in her head. "And by the way, he's on some pain pills so he's acting goofy."

"Can he walk? Do you need me to help? I can come down there."

"No, just wait for us. We'll be up in a few minutes."

Kate finished grabbing her bag and closed the trunk. When she got over to the passenger side, she found Rick with his feet out of the opened door but still sitting on the seat. He looked up her when he heard her heels click on the cement floor as she walked toward him. "You look really tall," he told her.

"Yeah, yeah. Let's get you upstairs. I'm sure Alexis is waiting for you. And try not to scar her for life by talking about little blue pills or sex on a plane, okay?"

He hoisted himself up out of the car and promptly listed in her direction. After she caught him and started walking him to the elevator, he asked, "If I don' talk about it now, can we _do it_ later? I misssssed you, honey."

"Sure, Castle. But remember, if you mention anything inappropriate in front of your daughter, that's it. No 'doing it'. I may just even go back to my apartment or sleep on your couch." She knew full well that he would be in no mood for nocturnal bedroom aerobic activities tonight, but if he thought he would be and she could use that assumption to keep him in line while they spoke to Alexis, then more power to her.

He didn't miss her threat of going home, and some drugged-up whining ensued. "Kaaaaate! You can't go hooooommmme! You havta stay with meeee!"

"Fine," she said as she ushered him into the elevator and pushed the button for his floor. "I'll stay. But only if you behave around your daughter. No talk that's even PG rated or I, Mr. Castle, will be outta there so fast that your head will be spinning."

"Iss already spinnin' sometimes."

She just rolled her eyes, and he bent down and gave her a sloppy kiss on her cheek. "I'm glad you're here," he whispered loudly by her ear. When the feeling of his breath tickled her ear, she got that funny little feeling in her stomach again. It was almost nostalgic, like when she'd been watching the video of Rick's failed dive on the boat, because it brought her mind back to the trip, and brought back those feelings of when they first started to get closer to each other. The feelings were probably magnified a little bit now because she'd missed him today, and this, now, was the first time they'd really been alone since the plane the day before. She instantly remembered when he came up behind her on the beach, the night after their first kisses, when she just stood with him in the sand and watched the sunset, his arms wrapped around her. She remembered getting that funny feeling in her stomach then too. And she was finding that she _loved_ having that feeling. It was like her own little personal high and she just always had the urge to grin whenver she felt it. She felt happy. She wished she could bottle it.

She turned her head and gave him a little kiss on his jaw, but then the elevator dinged and she straightened up and got ready to step off just as the doors opened. She nudged Rick forward and as she walked down the short hallway toward his loft, she saw the door open and a red head peek out.

When Alexis saw her father, her eyes got wide as she took in the bruising and swelling on his face. "God, Dad, what happened? Was it an alien abduction gone wrong?" Kate was grateful that the girl was able to joke, even though she could hear the worry behind the words.

Rick shuffled forward, giving her a grin. "Hiya, pun'kin! Ooo, alien abduction...I like tha' story. Thass a lot better than sayin' I got decked by some mad guy."

After giving her father a quick hug, making sure to avoid his injured side, she backed up into the loft and the two adults followed. She noted the overnight bag slung over Beckett's shoulder, and she decided to not beat around the bush. "Detective Beckett, are you staying here tonight?"

"Alexis, call me Kate, okay?" She gave Rick a gentle push toward the living room. "Go lay down for a minute on the couch, Rick. Alexis and I will see if we can get some ice for your eye."

He walked off toward the living room, in a straight line, for the most part. Kate turned back to Alexis. "Alexis, I'm sorry to blindside you like this. Yes, your dad invited me to stay over." She made a split-second decision to not mention Rick's other offer-demand-quite yet, that being his insistence that she move in. "But it was before all of this happened. And I know this is really sudden for you, and please know that the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable in your own home. So if you'd-"

"Kaaaaaattte!" came the warble from the other room, interrupting the conversation.

Kate rolled her eyes before she called out, "Just sit still, Rick. I'll be there in a minute."

"Nah. Take your time. I'm just gonna go pee," he announced. "I'll be back," he finished then, trying to do a Schwarzennegger accent with the famous line.

"Can we trust him by himself? He seems a little...off." Alexis wondered aloud.

"That's debatable," Kate answered. "And 'a little off' is putting it mildly."

"Bad?" Alexis asked, furrowing her brow at Kate.

"You don't know that half of it. Apparently he was singing Katy Perry lyrics in the bathroom at the Old Haunt."

Her eyes got big. "Oh, that _is_ kind of scary. Firework?" she asked, trying to guess the song.

"E.T."

"Oh. Well, I guess it fits with the alien abduction theory," she joked.

"You are your father's daughter." Kate smiled back at the teenager. Then she tried to go back to their previous conversation. "Listen, Alexis, about me staying here-"

"If Dad said you could stay," she interrupted, "then who am I to say otherwise?" Her tone was polite, but Kate could tell the uncertainty and conflicting feelings behind the mild snark of the words. Kate put her hand on Alexis' shoulder.

"Alexis, you have a lot of say. This is your home too. Your dad and I talked, and I know you had some misgivings about...everything that's happened with your dad and me. And you weren't there for any of it, to see any of it...you know, us getting together, so I imagine you felt...feel pretty blindsided about it all."

Alexis just looked at Kate. She wanted to be kind of mad at her, but she knew it wasn't Kate's fault. And it wasn't her dad's fault either. She was sort of glad that they were together, and she was glad that they were happy. She really was. It was just...she felt...oh, heck, she just didn't feel right. Or happy. But she didn't know why. And she felt kind of bad about that-guilty. Then, with a start, she realized that she was feeling exactly what Kate had just described. She felt blindsided, like things were out of her control and she didn't know what was going on.

Kate saw the confusion on the girl's face, the myriad of emotions that flitted through those startlingly blue eyes which were so like her father's. So she just continued on when Alexis didn't make a move to say anything right away. "Listen...Alexis, I know we have to talk. But I didn't count on your dad trying to do a bad Rocky Balboa imitiation. I think he's going to drop over any time now, so what do you say we get him into bed before he does, so we don't have to figure out a way to pick him up and carry him? Then when he's asleep, we can talk for a bit."

"Uh, okay. I guess." Alexis, despite her youth, was level-headed, and she could see that getting her dad in bed was the best course of action right now. The rest could wait, although she wasn't really looking forward to the conversation that Beckett had alluded to.

Beckett turned toward the refrigerator. "Do you have any ice packs in the freezer? Something soft that won't hurt your dad's face too much?"

Despite the weirdness of the situation, Alexis smiled. "Are you kidding? With Gram here? We have a special bin in the freezer for them. Gets rid of the bags and puffiness for those early morning rehearsals after the late night whatevering."

"Whatevering?"

"Yeah. Stereotypical, cookie-baking grandmother she is _not_. When your grandmother stays out late and comes home in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes singing random showtunes, I prefer not to think of what said grandmother may have been doing. So...'whatevering'. Less of a shock to my delicate teenage sensiblities, you know."

Kate smiled at her. "Gotcha." She reached in the freezer to grab the ice packs and asked Alexis to get him a glass of ice water. When they had the items, they started walking to his bedroom. Halfway there, they heard a crash coming from that vicinity and took off running. Kate, used to breaking into a dead sprint after suspects, arrived in the room first, to find the author sitting on the floor next to a table, with a broken lamp on the floor on the other side. He had a dazed look on his damaged face.

"Rick! What happened?" Kate bent down next to him while Alexis rushed into the room, trying not to spill the glass of water she carried.

"I juss took a step, but my foot dint wanna move right, and I fell into the table. I guess that lamp izzun really a good thing to grab onto."

"Dad," Alexis said, "I know you were probably going to stay up and do stuff with Kate and me, but I think maybe you should just lay down for a little while."

"But I don' wanna!" he pouted. "I wanna stay upppp!"

Alexis stole a look at Kate. She'd heard her dad pout before, but this pouting held a decidedly childish quality to it. Kate just nodded at her very slightly, as if you say 'didn't I tell you?'

So Kate tried her hand, and said, "Rick, Alexis is right. She's really smart, isn't she?" Kate tried to prey on Rick's pride in his daughter. When he nodded, she continued, "So since she's so smart, don't you think that if she thinks you should lay down for a little while, that you should? I mean, you don't want to make her feel bad because you're not listening to her, do you?" Oh, she hoped Alexis understood what she was doing.

But she needn't have worried. When they both looked at the girl, she had a pitiful look on her face that would have rivaled her father's pitiful 'poor me' looks. "Really, dad, I think you should lay down. For just a little bit. Your face...uh...looks like it hurts a lot. I just don't want you to get hurt anymore. I'll really feel badly if something happens to you just because you won't lay down for a while." Her voice was soft and sweet, and designed to wrap her dad around her finger. "Don't worry, we won't do anything fun without you."

He looked at her, and with his mind the way it was right now, neither of the ladies could tell exactly what he was thinking. But they let out a collective sigh of relief when he uttered, "Fiiiiiine. But no ice cream wi'out me, 'kay?"

"Of course. It's your turn to make the sundaes, right?" Kate asked, referring to their partaking of ice cream while on vacation. He nodded in understanding (or maybe just because he felt like being agreeable...who knew?), and she helped him up and to the bed while Alexis went over to the night table and set the water down.

"Rick, do you have some pajama pants? You probably don't want to sleep in your shirt and sport coat."

He waved generally toward the dresser while he laid back on the pillows. Kate looked at Alexis, wondering how she should broach the topic of getting Rick out of his regular clothes and into bed. Alexis was an astute girl, and she knew what came next: either Kate helped him or Alexis did. They were the only ones there, and her dad obviously needed help. But the girl knew that things had changed, and Kate was now in his life. Very much in his life. In _their_ lives, even though her feelings were sitll very conflicted about that part of it. So, even though part of her hated to admit it, she knew that Kate was the better person to handle this, so she deferred to her. "Uh, you can probably handle this. I'll just go...back to the kitchen...and I'll...get something for us. Uh, how about a smoothie?"

Kate smiled. "That sounds great, Alexis. Let me just get your dad settled and I'll be right down."

The teenager exited the room, and Kate turned back to Rick, who was almost dozing on the pillows already. She sat down on the bed and touched the uninjured side of his face. "Rick. Rick, wake up. Open your eyes for me, come on now," she cajoled.

He obeyed, opening his eyes and giving her a contented smile, even though she wondered if he was even focusing on her. "Good," she told him. "Can you sit up? Let's get your shirt and your coat off."

He complied, but of course had to say, "You juss can' wait to get me out of my clothes, huh, Beckett?" She thought he attempted to give her a leer, but with the state of his face and the swelling around his bad eye, he just wasn't able to pull it off.

"Hey, Rocky, save the loaded looks for when your face is better, okay? The bruising just kind of detracts from the sexy look and ventures more into the pitiful range." She helped him out of his jacket and began to unbutton his shirt for him. He tried to reach under her shirt and she swatted his hands away. "You're resting now, remember? So you need to change, but I need to keep my clothes on right now."

"Sorrrryyyy. Force o' habit." And he grinned at her again.

She got him out of the rest of his clothes and went over to the dresser and began opening drawers until she found a pile of t-shirts in one and some pajama pants in another. She took them back over to the bed. He was still sitting up, so she took the t-shirt and pulled it gently over his head, taking care to avoid the injured side of his face. Then she told him to take his pants off; she figured his hands would probably start wandering if she tried to do it. The door was still open, after all; she didn't want to worry if Alexis might happen to pop her head back into the room. Luckily, he complied without a fight and she helped him into a pair of pajama pants with smiley faces all over them.

After he'd given another big yawn, she tucked him into the bed under the covers. He was propped up against the pillows in a semi-sitting, semi-reclining position, and he was trying to stay awake, but it was proving difficult and each of his blinks was lasting longer and longer. She sat back down on the side of the bed by his chest, and she looked around the room. She'd been by the room in the past, so she knew where it was within the loft, but she'd never before been inside it. It was his _bedroom._ There was no way that she would have gone inside it before now; that alone would have been fraught with innuendo possibilities and frankly, she just would never have had a reason to.

Now, looking around, she could see that it was a man's bedroom; no flowers or frills. But the decor was tasteful, the furnishings were on the comfortable side of opulent, and the room was spacious. If the goal was comfort, that had been achieved. Then she realized that she was in Richard Castle's bedroom. She shook her head and smiled at the thought, of how when she started reading his books, she never would have thought in a million years that she would be sitting here, on his bed in his bedroom, after having put him to bed! As she was surveying the room and getting lost in her thoughts, she was snapped back to the present when she heard his voice say, "Like it?"

When she looked at him, he vaguely waved his hand around. "The room. Like it? If you don't, you can redecorate."

Redecorate? Castle's _bedroom_?

She must have had a surprised look on her face when she heard his words, and somehow he must have caught it. "Yup. You're gonna be livin' here now so you havta like it. If you don' like it. Change it. I don' care what it looks like as long as you're here. Thas whass 'mportant."

Oh, God. He was talking about her moving in here! He'd mentioned it this morning, but...but she'd hoped he was just being weird and that he'd forget about it. But then she remembered the ring on her finger, and she again had a realization...that if she married him, even a while into the future, she would indeed be living with him, there. Unless they moved. But really, there was no reason to move; his loft was wonderful. "I...uh...it's a nice room," was all she could think to say.

He smiled another goofy grin and then he grabbed her upper arm lightly and pulled her toward him. "C'mere," he told her. When he had his arms securely around her, with her face tucked into his neck, he whispered into her hair, "I missed you."

She pulled back a bit so she could see his face, and she noted the content but still goofy grin on it. "I know. I missed you too," she whispered. They each just spent the next several seconds silent, but drinking in the sight of the other, now that they were finally alone together again.

"I'm glad you're here now." And he gave her a light feather of a kiss on her lips.

"Me too." She gave him a little smile, but then her smile dropped as she ran her finger over the side of his face right under his bruised eye. "But you need to rest now. Getting punched out does a number on you."

"Okay," he complied. "But only if I get a goo'nigh' kiss"

"Always the negotiator," she laughed, but then leaned in and touched her lips to his. It was a tender kiss, just a kiss to convey love for the other person and the contentment and happiness that they were together again. And those feelings transcended his injuries, and even his impaired mental state. Their lips lingered on each others, but when the kiss ended, she leaned into his shoulder to wrap him in a quick hug before pulling away. "There. That should last you for a little while. I'll check on you in a bit." Then on impulse, she cupped his good cheek with her hand and leaned forward to give him another quick little peck before scooting back and sitting up again. "Love you."

"Love you back." He gave her arm a quick squeeze but then released her, and he scooted down in the bed a bit and closed his eyes, like he was settling in for a nap.

When Kate stood up, she became aware of the person standing in the doorway. She suddenly felt uncomfortable...how much had the girl seen? But she just schooled her face in a bland expression and walked over to where Alexis stood, asking her, "He's pretty tired, but do you want to go say good night to him before he's totally out?"

Alexis looked at her dad, then at Kate quickly, then back at her dad. Kate couldn't read the expression on the girl's face either. Finally Alexis replied, "No, he's sleeping. I don't want to wake him. I just wanted to tell you that the smoothies are done, and I wanted to know if I should put them in the fridge or not."

"No. I'm coming down. We can let him sleep and check on him later. Let's go." And Kate followed Alexis out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, trying to mentally prepare herself for the conversation they were going to have about her new relationship with the girl's father. Castle was supposed to be with her for this...she shouldn't have to do this all herself! When he got better, she just might have to hurt him all over again for making her do this by herself.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

When she was downstairs making the smoothies, Alexis' mind was going everywhere. Her dad was hurt. Obviously it had happened earlier today, and yet nobody had called her. Detective Beckett-Kate-was here. She'd brought him home. She was staying overnight. And she was in her dad's room, putting her dad to bed.

Alexis was an expert smoothie maker, and it didn't take her very long at all. But Kate still hadn't come back to the kitchen. Alexis cleaned everything up, and still, there was no sign of Kate. So she thought...what was the harm? Even Kate had said it was her house too, right? So she started slowly walking toward her father's room. She was just going to peek and see what was taking so long for her to come back.

The door was still open and she was just going to knock lightly and ask if they needed anything, or tell Kate that the smoothies were ready. As sheapproached the room, she could hear some low voices, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. But when she looked into the room, the first thing she saw was Beckett sitting there looking at her dad. No, they both were looking-gazing-at each other. Her dad was a writer, and 'gazing' was definitely a better descriptor of what they were doing. She had to admit it...they looked lost in each other. She figured she'd be able to set off firecrackers in the hallway where she stood and they wouldn't have even noticed; they were that wrapped up in each other. Then her dad pulled Kate to him and he put his arms around her, grinning. He looked...happy. Despite how awful his face looked, she had to admit that he looked really happy. And then when Kate pulled away, they just looked at each other again. She was going to give a soft knock on the door, but then she stopped herself when she saw the look on their faces. They were still lost in each other, and she saw Kate tenderly run her finger over her dad's face by his bruised cheek. Then Kate pulled back and Alexis heard her tell her dad that he needed to get some sleep.

But her dad asked for a good night kiss, and that was when it got weird. Alexis knew logically that they were together, but she still wasn't used to seeing them that way. So when Beckett didn't even bat an eyelash at his request, or offer anything like her normal type of sassy, put-him-in-his-place comeback when talking to her dad, that was strange in itself. But then Beckett smiled and leaned down to him. And she'd seen her dad kiss other women, but this one still caught her off-guard. It was a sweet kiss, entered into with no hesitation by either party. They lingered on that little kiss, which showed just how much it meant to both of them, and how much they both meant to each other. If she'd had any lingering piece of doubt in her mind that her dad and Kate had real feelings for each other, that doubt evaporated as she watched them gaze at each other, and watched that lingering little kiss.

Her dad looked happy and in love. They both did. She couldn't deny that. And even though it still felt a little bit strange with how fast everything had happened, she realized that she felt a little better. She could see that Beckett really cared about her dad. And just as that thought flitted through her brain, she heard Kate put it into words when she told her dad that she loved him. And her unease and discomfort melted a little bit just hearing those words...words that were spoken so easily and comfortably. They didn't know she was there-she was sure of that-so when she watched them and saw what she saw, she knew it was true, honest emotion for her father coming from the detective. She wasn't playacting. She wasn't just telling him that to get him wrapped around her finger. Alexis could tell that she really meant it. It wasn't just the words; it was the looks, the touches. It was the kiss. It was the obvious concern for him.

But Alexis didn't have time to think very much about her reaction and her new realizations, because just then, Kate stood up and caught sight of her. She was caught, and she almost felt like she was intruding on a personal moment. Well, heck, she guessed she was. And Beckett asked her right away about her dad, not even giving her time to give an excuse for basically eavesdropping. So she told Kate about the smoothies and said she would check on him later, and then she left the room and began to walk back to the kitchen. She knew she and Kate were going to have a very important conversation in just a few minutes. She was feeling so many things right now that she just hoped she could hold it together enough so she didn't seem like a selfish brat in the eyes of the new lady in her dad's life.

* * *

_**If anyone is wondering, no, Alexis hasn't caught sight of the ring yet. Her limited time with Beckett so far has been overshadowed by her dad and his injuries, so her attention was on him. I wanted her to still feel a little upset and angry about how serious her dad told her the relationship was, but at the same time, I wanted her to have a chance to observe them together so she could see it for herself, since she's never seen them really together. Hope I did okay.**_

_**7/28 Edit: Thanks to those of you who confirmed for me that Castle's bedroom is on the first floor. I edited the story to take this into account.**_

_**More Alexis and Kate in the next chapter.**_

_********__Also have to say that with this chapter, I went over 300,000 words. Thanks for those of you who helped put that in perspective. WOW! Kudos to all of you who are still reading!_

_**Hey...did anyone see the teaser for 'Rise'? Man, that is one LONG hallway!**_


	75. Chapter 75

_**First, I'm sorry this chapter took so long. I got it about 1/3 done and then my computer froze and I lost it. I'd just saved it, but when I went into the saved doc, it was blank. Ugh! So, I had to try to rewrite the masterpiece (j/k) that I'd lost. And let me tell you, trying to find time while carting my kids to their end-of-season sporting events while trying to find motivation to rewrite all of this was no easy task.**_

_**Second, though I don't always thank everyone personally, I do read each and every review. And I do appreciate the vast majority, even if there's something that someone may not like. For example, people told me that they didn't like the 'lying' aspect of the punking plan, when all was said and done. So I thought about it, and I changed my original idea of how to handle it, and I think the story is better for it. So I do listen to what people want to see from this story. But one review in particular for the last chapter had me shaking my head and the only thought I could come up with was...**_

_**Wow.**_

_**Although something laced with a good amount of snark doesn't really deserve a response, in my opinion, I'm still addressing it here for those of you who may have read it. Addressing it to the **__**anonymous**__** reviewer is obviously useless since she is apparently "too bored to continue reading", so I feel that I must defend myself here since I also can't respond directly to her. To insinuate that I'm dragging this story on unnecessarily just to garner more reviews is...quite the interesting assumption, and totally untrue. First, I said from the start that I was writing this as I went along. I do not outline my stories first; that isn't how my brain works. So the length is merely a result of how the story has evolved in the last nine months, not any other nefarious plot to string people along. I've said many times that it's gotten longer than I **__**ever**__** thought it would. Way longer. Next, I have to say that if I really wanted to get more reviews, I would have done what I see a lot of fanfic writers do, and that is to write a lot of very short chapters, some of which barely fill my compter screen. More chapters mean more reviews, right? (sarcasm intended there) But no, I don't do that. If that was truly my goal, I might have 150 or more chapters by now. So, Joanna-Leigh, I wish you better luck with other fanfics that you don't deem 'ridiculous'. **_

_**And to everyone else who still likes my story and takes the time to leave a **__**constructive**__** review, THANK YOU! That said, even though you may not be 100% positive about what I'm doing with the story, I do still appreciate all of the constructive reviews I receive, because they bring up points while I may still tweak the story, as I did with the example I gave above. Referencing something that you feel should have been done differently 30 chapters and several months ago (like ending the story) does absolutely no good, except, perhaps, as an outlet for a bunch of built-up snark. It's your right not to like it. Every story is a matter of personal preference, and I'm very thankful for those of you who DO like my story. Without you, I never would have had the motivation to continue. And if you don't like it, if it's not to your taste, that's FINE. Just don't read it. But please, keep the unconstructive snark at home, or send me a personal message so that I may defend myself if I wish without having to waste space here.**_

_**So, that said, my previous disclaimers still stand, and I hope that those of you who are still reading enjoy the following chapter.**_

* * *

They walked into the kitchen, Kate trailing behind Alexis, and Kate could see the two glasses with straws on the counter. Alexis just picked one up and gestured for Kate to take the other. The girl didn't even seem to stop as she made her way out of the kitchen and went to the living room. Kate grabbed the other glass and followed, taking a sip as she went.

She was suprised at how good it tasted and she told Alexis that. "This is really good! Wow...you could go into business selling these if your dad ever has writer's block and can't write again."

"Um...thanks. It's just a lot of frozen fruit and juice." The girl tried to minimize the accolades. "It's nothing special."

"Nothing special? Actually, this tastes like absolute heaven after the day I've had."

"Umm...thanks." Alexis didn't really know what to say to her comment, but she was secretly a little bit pleased by it just the same. Once they were comfortable, they sat in silence for several minutes, just sipping their smoothies, until Alexis finally broke the silence. "I'm, uh, sorry for before. For walking in on you and dad. I really wasn't trying to eavesdrop or anything. I just...the smoothies were done and you weren't back yet so I just thought I'd come to see where you were, and then I saw you and dad and..." The girl's slight babbling trailed off, obviously nervous at 'fessing up to being caught observing the two adults in what was a private moment.

"It's fine, Alexis. The door was open, after all."

Alexis just nodded.

Kate decided she had to forge on, because at this rate, nothing would get settled. And she knew there was a lot to settle, or at least discuss. And Castle was in no shape to discuss anything meaningful. She couldn't sit here any longer without trying to reach some sort of a detente with Castle's daughter.

"Alexis, you saw my bag before. Your dad invited me to stay over, actually for the next few nights. And I'll be staying with him, uh...in his room. We're together...like that...now. We're involved. But I know you know that, because I know your dad told you about it when we were still in Florida."

She waited to see if Alexis would say anything. Kate suspected that the girl had a lot of conflicting emotions running around inside of her right now, and that she had plenty to say, but she just didn't know where to start. Finally, Alexis nodded slightly and softly responded, "Yeah. He told me. I just didn't know it was so...serious. This fast."

Kate took a breath. "You're right. It _is_ serious. And it is fast, if you look at it strictly from the time we left for Florida until now. That part of it still even freaks me out sometimes." The last comment earned a quick little surprised glance from Alexis, but then she returned her gaze to her cup. "But for us, you can't look at just the last two weeks and assume that's all there's been of the relationship. We've known each other for years, and we've been through a lot together. But here, there were always interruptions and distractions. And we were growing closer all along, but we just didn't realize it. So when we were together in a strange place, without all of the normal distractions and interruptions, the real feelings just sort of came out. Eventually."

Several loaded seconds went by as Kate waited for some response from Alexis, but when she finally got a response, it wasn't what she'd hoped for as the girl simply responded with a bland, "Uh huh."

Kate decided to be a little more blunt. "Alexis, I love your dad."

"Okay." She looked up and gave a bit of a nod.

They were getting nowhere.

"At the risk of sounding like a shrink, how do you feel about that?"

Finally, she looked back at Kate and shrugged. "It sounds...nice, I guess? Congratulations and all of that." She didn't sound congratulatory in the least.

Kate sighed. Damn it, why did Castle have to go and get himself knocked out and leave her to deal with this? She'd only seen Alexis when she was happy and bubbly. Well, except for the time when she took Castle apart piece by piece when he all but did a background check on her violin tutor. She didn't know how to handle a sullen, bothered Alexis-especially when all signs were pointing in the direction that _she_ was the one who was bothering Alexis.

Kate decided that a little more bluntness didn't seem to be working. She would have to ratchett it up to full-throttle bluntness.

"Okay. Um, Alexis? I'm not stupid. It's obvious you're bothered or annoyed or pissed off about something. And it's new since last night, because I talked to you on the phone then, and you were nothing like this then. You actually talked to me then, and I could almost hear you smiling. You sounded happy and excited. Now you're just sitting there, all glum, you're hardly saying anything to me, and you're barely looking at me. So you know, you'll make it a lot easier on both of us if you'll just talk to me so we can start working toward some common ground."

Kate thought she would start talking about three times in the ensuing minutes, but she never did. But finally, some words spilled softly from her mouth. "I didn't know then that everything had really changed."

Kate thought about what Rick had told her on the phone, and she knew Alexis was talking about her dad's proposal. Rick had told her that she was fine until he mentioned the engagement ring, so she had a strong suspicion that her reticence now had to do with that. She had the feeling that if she didn't address the root cause of her obvious discomfort, they could keep circling around the issues for hours, probably culminating in a big blow-up, which she definitely did not want to happen. She took a deep breath. "He told you about this," she stated, holding up her left hand and showing off the ring that she was now wearing.

As Alexis looked at her and registered the ring on her hand, her eyes got big and Kate saw her sharp intake of breath. "But dad said...you weren't...you're not supposed to be wearing it yet. Dad said-"

"I don't know exactly what your dad told you, but he gave me the ring and told me to put it on whenever I was ready. And some...stuff happened today that made me rethink things, but I don't want to go into that now." She stopped to take a breath as the image of the body of Jonathan Hill flitted through her mind. But she forced it away as she continued, "No, I'm not ready to marry him right now, but I _do_ know now that I want to marry him someday. And," she looked down at the ring on her finger, "that's what this means. He made a committment by giving it to me, and now I'm making one by wearing it. So I put it on, just tonight before we went to the Old Haunt." She hadn't been intending to get into that much detail, but given the girl's attitude, maybe more detail was better.

Kate looked up and found Alexis staring at the ring. When their eyes met, Alexis asked, "Does he know? I mean, because he's like _that_?" she asked, referring to his drugged state. "Does he realize?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure. He saw it and knew what it was then, but who knows how much he'll remember when he wakes up again."

Several seconds of silence went by while Alexis finished looking at the ring and then resumed her intense concentration on her smoothie glass, before she finally said, "So is that why nobody called me when he got hurt? 'Cause you're going to marry him so now I'm just kind of out of the loop?" Kate could hear the confusion and hurt in her soft words.

Now it was Kate's turn for her eyes to widen in surprise. She thought that? "Alexis...no! Geez! Absolutely not! He didn't tell me either!" And then, under her breath, she muttered to herself, "When he's better, I'm gonna kill him myself!"

"What?" If it had been a different situation, Kate might have laughed at the sudden confusion on Alexis' face.

"You heard right...that doofus didn't tell me anything! I didn't find out until he showed up at the Old Haunt looking like he was he was a stunt double for Rocky. Apparently, when he was taken to the hospital-"

"He went to the _hospital_?"

"Yeah. Believe me, I know. I even talked to him on the phone after he was apparently in the hospital and drugged up and he didn't even say anything then. I knew something was weird with him, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it then. They did a CT scan, I guess. But of course, the only way I know this," she told the girl in an exasperated tone, "is because I got some information from Lanie and Esposito, who he did manage to call. They were with him at the hospital."

"Lanie and Esposito?"

"Yeah. We all went to the Old Haunt...well, we'll explain that later. I got there first, and I'm expecting your dad to come waltzing into the bar in grand fashion like he usually does. Only I see him come down the stairs with Esposito...and he's walking slowly and he's all banged up. And he gives me some line about not wanting me to worry, and then Esposito and Lanie tell me about the hospital...they'd both left the station early for an emergency-that's all they said when they left-because apparently your dad called _them_ when he was taken to the hospital. Not me, and not you. So I didn't even find out about anything until just a little while ago."

"He didn't call you?" Her voice held a note of skeptical surprise.

"No." Kate leaned forward in her chair, toward Alexis more. "God, Alexis, if your dad had called me, you would have been the very first person that _I_ would have called. I know how important you two are to each other. I would _never_ keep something like that from one of you."

The girl had lapsed into silence again and Kate could see that she was thinking about everything. "How long ago did it happen?" she finally said.

"You know, I'm not entirely sure. Did you know that he had meetings with his publisher today?"

Alexis nodded. "He left a message for me; said he wouldn't be home when I got home from school and he wouldn't be at the station either."

"From what he told me in the very brief period of lucidity in between his pain pills, he went to lunch with all of the publishing people. There was some lady there and a guy was threatening her somehow, and of course he had to get involved."

"Of course." Alexis rolled her eyes. Did it seem like she was thawing, maybe just a little bit?

"So I guess it was sometime early this afternoon. I don't know exactly what happened, but the guy hit your dad, and then he hit a table somehow, and it knocked him unconscious. And then there was the hospital, and Lanie and Esposito, and the pain pills, and the Old Haunt. And now we're here. And Rocky is sleeping peacefully now instead of belting out E.T. in the men's room."

Alexis nodded again, but didn't say anything more. Kate continued, not really planning what she was going to say, but just let the words flow out of her mouth. "Alexis, it's just been you and your dad for a while. I know that. I get that. And I don't want to do anything that's going to spoil that for either one of you. I envy that...I wish I had that closeness with my dad. I mean, we're pretty good now, but there was a time..." She trailed off as she seemed to get lost in the past for just a moment, but then she mentally shook herself and came back to the present. "But that's a story for some other time. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is new territory for me. I've never been involved with a guy with a kid before. And you're not really even a kid anymore anyway. But I respect the relationship you two have-I think it's wonderful-and I won't knowingly do anything to harm that."

Once again, Alexis was silent for a while after Kate stopped talking. Finally she said, "I just...I thought it was cool when he told me you guys got together. You always really gave it right back to him...you know? You didn't let him get away with anything. You didn't fawn all over him and go all ga-ga because he was rich and famous. He needs that. And that's good. But then...then I could tell there was something he wasn't telling me, and...he told me that he proposed to you! I mean, it came out of nowhere!"

"You know, Alexis, I kind of felt the same way," Kate replied dryly.

Alexis continued. "You guys getting together, I can handle. And I kind of figured you'd probably be staying over here and...stuff...and probably moving in eventually." She was looking down, or she might have missed Kate's eyes widen slightly when Alexis mentioned about moving in. Especially with Rick's proclamation of that very thing when she'd talked to him this morning. "But, _marriage_? For real? I mean, it's one thing to do 'what ifs' in your head, but when I heard him say it, it was just..."

Kate sat there, watching Alexis, but the girl had just trailed off. After her silence and short little answers for so long, Kate was grateful for the longer monologue of her feelings. And she didn't want her to go back to the silence, so she gently prompted, "It was just what?"

"Nothing."

"Alexis, it's not nothing. Tell me."

"It's stupid."

"If it's causing you to feel as weird as you seem to be feeling right now, then it's not stupid."

"No, forget it. It's seriously dumb."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Remember when I said you were your father's daughter? Well you really are. Usually when your father is like this, I threaten to shoot him. Now I won't do that yet with you because I think we need to get to know each other better, but we're never going to do that unless you talk to me. You were going to say something, so say it. Whatever it is, they're your feelings, and you're entitled to them. Come on, don't clam up on me now."

Alexis looked up with a gleam in her eye, asking her, "But if you won't shoot me until we know each other better, and I don't talk to you, then we won't know each other better, so I'll never be in danger of you shooting me! Win-win for me!"

Kate just lowered her face to her hands and took a deep breath. "Did you learn your logic from him or did he learn it from you?" When she looked up, she found Alexis sneaking a look at her, a slight smirk on her face. Well, at least that was better than the sullen, uncommunicative girl of a few minutes ago. "So come on, Alexis, just tell me. I won't laugh. I promise."

And just like that, the gleam in her eye was gone again. In its wake, the worried look had returned as the lighter mood had vanished. But at least the girl didn't appear to be quite as unwilling to talk as she had before. She opened her mouth a few times as if to start speaking, obviously trying to find the words that she wanted to say. "It was just...I sort of had this feeling like I didn't have a home anymore."

Her voice was small when she spoke, with uncertainty and some embarrassment laced through the words. Kate closed her eyes briefly. Poor kid. Why did Castle have to tell his daughter about the ring right away? Why couldn't the man have just kept his mouth shut for a single day and at least let the kid ease into seeing them together as a couple before he sprung that on her?

"This will always be your home...you have to know that." Kate tried for some sort of reassurance.

"I told you it was stupid." She looked like she wanted to kick herself for opening up her mouth. Kate felt for her; she was someone who found it hard to open up anyway, and to open up when you were sure that your feelings were going to garner criticism or ridicule...well, that was even more difficult.

"Sweetie..." Alexis' eyes snapped over to her and belatedly, Kate realized the endearment that had escaped her lips. Well, too late to do anything about that now. "Do you know _why_ you feel that way...that you wouldn't have a home? Don't overanalyze; just blurt out whatever is in your mind right now."

And blurt it out she did, quickly and pretty much in one breath. "Because you'll be married and you'll be living here and it'll be your home too, like, _legally_ and everything and you could kick me out and you probably won't have room for me anyway when you have kids."

Kate stared at the girl after her verbal barrage of words had ceased, half surprised that she'd actually done what Kate had suggested and had just let everything spill out of her. Instinctively, Kate knew that whatever she said next was going to have a huge impact on how everything went for the foreseeable future. She tried to formulate the right blend of words for her to, hopefully, ease her fears just a bit. But before she could say anything, Alexis got another worried look on her face.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. It's Dad's home, and he can do whatever he wants. And if he wants to invite the circus to live here here, he could do that. And if he wants to marry you and you want to marry him, then you can do that and who am I to say that you shouldn't? And I'll be gone soon anyway. It's really-"

"Alexis."

"-not a problem, I guess. Like I said, the whole thing is stupid. I mean, I have to go out and forge my own way in the world soon anyway, right? So if you guys-"

"Alexis." Kate tried the second time with a little more conviction and shifted out of her chair to sit a little closer to Alexis, on the couch, but the girl didn't really even seem to notice. She was just staring forward into space, speaking in her teenage fast-paced voice, almost as if she was trying to rationalize it to herself. Once she'd started speaking out loud, it seemed that she couldn't be stopped. She was on a roll.

"-want to have a whole bunch of kids, then you're going to need my room anyway. And Dad will really like playing with all of the toys that they have for kids these days, so that'll be really cool for him. You'll probably need my room just for all of-"

Alexis finally took note of Kate again when she felt the hand clamp over her mouth. She looked over at her dad's new girlfriend-oops, that would be fiancee-and found Kate looking at her with one raised eyebrow as she was forced to stop her verbal justification of why her feelings were stupid.

Kate, on her end, almost couldn't believe that she had to stop yet another Castle from having an excessive verbal outburst by clamping a hand over a mouth. "Alexis, shut up for a minute. Do you know how many times I had to do that to your dad earlier at that Old Haunt? Forgive me for being repetitive, but you really are your father's daughter. Can I tell you something now?"

The nod made her remove her hand. "Good. Thanks." She took a deep breath. "This is new territory for me, you know? None of the other guys that I've dated have had a child. Now," she held up a hand, "don't start thinking that I'm saying it's a bad thing. Because it's not...you're not. It'll just take some getting used to. I mean, I've been worried myself about how things would go. The last thing I want to do is come in here and seem like I'm trying to take over. And then there's your dad, telling me to redecorate..." she trailed off, remembering the conversation in his bedroom out loud.

"Redecorate?" Alexis asked, puzzled.

"Yeah." She rolled her eyes. "Probably some ramblings of a drugged up Castle mind." Alexis nodded. "Anyway...this is new for both of us. But I've been straight with you about everything so far and I'm not going to stop now. This is your home. I'm not looking to get rid of you, and I know he's certainly not. I know your dad enough to know that if you never move out, that would probably be fine with him." Then she smiled a conspiratorial grin at Alexis. "Of course, if you ever decide to live with a guy or get married yourself, you might want to rethink that moving out thing because I really don't think he'd be cool with you alone in your bedroom with some guy with the door closed. You know how his imagination works. And can you imagine the ways he could come up with to interrupt you?"

The look on her face was priceless as she imagined what Kate had suggested, and she even gave a little shudder. But then she sobered as she asked softly, "So _are_ you guys going to have kids?"

On a sigh, Kate said, "Honestly? I don't know. Remember, I just put the ring on a few hours ago. I'm still trying to get my brain wrapped around it all, you know?" Alexis gave a small nod, but it was obvious that it wasn't enough of an answer for her. "When I was younger, I always thought I'd have kids. But then...life happened." It was a loaded statement, and Alexis knew enough about Beckett's past to know what she was talking about. "So I never really thought about it recently at all. Well, until last week. So, like I said, I don't really know."

Then, after the words were out of her mouth, she realized where the question came from. "But really, Alexis, you're not really worried about _me_ wanting kids, are you? Isn't the issue more that you're worried if your _dad_ has more kids?"

Worried and guilty blue eyes raised up to meet Kate's. "Sweetie, your dad told me about your conversation last night about this. Whether or not we have kids will not affect how your dad feels about you. You guys have so much history and nothing could get in the way of that."

"That's kind of what he said too," Alexis finally admitted.

"Well then...believe it."

She paused and then a small smile creeped onto her face. "Really, Alexis, think about it. Just think of the grief you could give your dad if we did have a baby...changing diapers, spit up..." Alexis gave a small smile, but didn't say anything.

Kate tentatively placed her hand on Alexis' shoulder. "Can you do me a favor?" The girl hesitantly nodded. "Can we just-both of us-try not to freak out about things? For a while? This is a lot of change for me too. So can we just get our bearings and try to get used to each other...maybe go shopping for a dress for a dance or something?" She smiled, reminding her of the previous plans made while they were in Florida. "We could get to know each other a little bit, try to keep your dad out of trouble, and maybe just see how things go? And then if you find that you can't stand me, let's talk about it then. We can have a lightsaber duel and fight it out. Although I think you'd win that one because I'm sure that living with your dad, you have a _lot_ more experience with lightsabers than I do."

Alexis looked at her hands, still holding the glass that had previously held her smoothie. She thought about what Detec-Kate was saying. Just see how things go. Get to know each other. Go shopping for a dress...she'd wanted the Detective to go shopping with her even before she found out about this whole marriage thing. They could still do that...couldn't they? She just didn't want to make a mistake. She didn't want to get hurt. And she didn't want her dad to get hurt. On that thought, she looked back up at Kate. "You really love him?"

"Yeah, I do. Came as a big shock when I realized it, but I do."

"A shock? You didn't, like, know?"

"No. I knew my feelings for him were changing, but then I kind of..." Now it was Kate's turn to trail off in embarrassment.

Now Alexis was intrigued. "Come on, Detec-Kate. You made me spill my guts to you. Turnabout is fair play."

Kate smiled. "It's stupid," she said, echoing Alexis' comments from earlier. Alexis just gave her an exasperated glare that said 'get on with it'. Kate took a deep breath. "When I realized that I loved your dad, it kind of gave me a pannicack." She said the last words quickly in a low tone, and for the most part, they were unintelligible.

Alexis' brow furrowed. "A what? I didn't quite catch that."

Kate sighed again. "A panic attack," she said more clearly. "I realized I loved him, and then I had a panic attack. Totally freaked out."

"No!" The girl wasn't sure whether to be shocked or to laugh. "Loving my dad made you freak out?"

"Well, yes, at first, just because I didn't realize it and it hit me all at once. I told you it was silly. Or it sounds silly now, anyway. But then I had some time to get used to the idea. Your poor dad...it wasn't too good for his ego."

Finally, Alexis decided to laugh. "I could see why not! With all of the women that have been throwing themselves at my dad over the years, that's really kind of funny that the one person that he's been mooning over for years has a panic attack when she finally realizes she has feelings for him."

"Okay, what? Mooning over...years...what? _Me_?" The surprise-shock-was evident in her words, and by the look on her face.

"Oh, _come on_! Duh...of course you!" Alexis almost felt like laughing now, because the Detective looked so discombobulated by her revelation.

Kate shook her head as if to clear it. "Okay, this has been a heck of a day, so I'm just going to leave that one alone for now. I think I need to get some sleep. Are we...okay for now?" She looked to the girl for confirmation. "Is there anything else we need to talk about right now?"

"Well..." She still sounded uncertain.

"Alexis, know that I want to make this work. I'm not going to bail on your dad, and I won't turn into an evil witch that's going to kick you out of the house. I really want to-"

"No, no, that's not what I meant. I was just thinking about dad. How to take care of him."

"Oh. Well. I'll uh...be in with him, uh, tonight, so, uh, how about I come and get you if I need any help with him?" Man, it really was not the easiest thing in the world to tell a teenage girl that you'd be sleeping with her father, even when you knew nothing risque would be happening. "Would that work?"

"Uh, yeah. I guess. I suppose I'll turn in too. I need to read a couple of chapters for English Lit, but I can do that in bed."

The two ladies got up and took their cups to the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher after rinsing them out. Kate picked up her bag and headed toward Rick's room. When she was almost there, she turned around and bid Alexis a goodnight. "Thanks for the smoothie, Alexis. And the talk. I'm glad we could...uh, talk about things a little." God that was about as uneloquent as it could be, Kate thought.

"Yeah. Um...Kate?"

"Take good care of my dad, okay?"

Kate smiled at the girl. "You bet. And when he's all healed up, what do you say we plot some revenge on him because he didn't call either of us from the hospital, okay?"

Alexis smiled, and Kate was relieved to see it was a real, genuine smile. "Sounds good to me. He'll need to pay."

Kate smiled back. "Good night, Alexis."

"Good night, Kate."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Ten minutes later, after getting ready for bed in the opulent master bathroom that was attached to the master bedroom, she crawled into bed beside Rick. It was the other side of the bed from what she was used to having in Florida, but she was tired, and she didn't figure that it would make a big difference tonight. They could get it sorted out tomorrow. As she sunk down into the plush mattress, she scooted toward Rick. She didn't want to disturb him, but she wanted to feel him by her. She needed to feel him. Gently, she laid down next to him and wrapped an arm over his chest, turning on her side and resting her head by his shoulder. She closed her eyes and felt herself relax against his body.

After laying there for only about a minute, she felt his hand raise up to cover her arm that was encircling his chest, and he turned his head slightly toward her as he mumbled, "Kate?"

"Yeah, it's me. I'm here."

"You're here." She opened her eyes and from the dim light in the room, she could see a small smile on his face.

"Go back to sleep, Rick. You need it."

"Mmmm," he mumbled as he turned slightly toward her. "Love you."

"Love you too."

And despite the fact that one of them was in a new bed in a strange place, and the other one had a nasty bump on the head, the two occupants of that bed both slept infinitely better than Monday night than they did the night before. Because now, once again, they were together.

* * *

_**We're getting there. I'm thinking that I only have one chapter left, maybe two at the most, unless I do an epilogue type of thing. I'm considering the epilogue, just to tie up some loose ends and revisit parts of the story that may have some humorous implications now that they're back home.**_

_**This conversation between Kate and Alexis was not as easy-nor as short-as I had envisioned it to be. Combine the normal difficulties with me losing part of the chapter, and this has to have been one of the most difficult chapters to write of this whole story.**_

_**Once again, I apologize profusely for how long this took to get written and published. It's a longer chapter, so I hope that makes up for a bit of the delay. Hope you enjoyed it!**_


	76. Chapter 76

_**I must say that I'm somewhat overwhelmed by the response for the last chapter. I'm so incredibly touched by some of the things that were written in reviews and were also sent to me via pm. I'm amazed. Livz-purple, I think that has to be about the longest review I've ever received. Thank you. And if I ever get in a bad mood or bummed about something, I'll have to pull it out and read it again and I'm sure it will make me feel better. Sonoonewillnowwhoiam, I think it's way cool that you took my story to Africa! But I still hope you have room left on your iPod! And honorable mentions to some of the other awesome people that left me some wonderful comments: Pwn Master Paladin, Dee Hensley, cinster, haha8248, casbeck, verenouche, porcelingods, teelduo, Chkgun93, FanficwriterGHC, SkookyD, m7thewriter, M, MyNameIsJeffImLost, Steve1961, and Chantal. If I didn't mention you, I do apologize...I appreciate everyone and all of you who are still reading.**_

_**I know this has to end, but I'm trying to make the end be...organic, I guess. Not rushed. And there were certain loose ends that I wanted to tie up, or at least address. So this started out being a pretty long chapter, but it got so long that I had to chop it off and divide it into two (and it's still the third longest chapter of this story anyway!). So here is the first part of the end.**_

_**Minor spoilers for 'Boom'.**_

_**Tone note for the chapter: Castle says an OMG in this chapter, and when writing it, in my mind I had him saying it like he says it in 'One Life to Lose' when he figures out that Beckett is a Temptation Lane fan.**_

_**Disclaimers: The usual. If I owned them, would I still be writing this?**_

* * *

It was still dark, but the glow of the lights from the city through the open windows illuminated the room just enough to see the outline of the room, and of the things in it. Rick fluttered back into consciousness and slowly opened his eyes and looked around the room. 'Oh', he thought, 'I actually managed to sleep.' But then he registered the slight throbbing in his head, and the difficulty in fully opening his left eye and he realized that it wasn't still Sunday night when he was trying desperately to be able to sleep without Kate next to him, but it was evidently sometime Monday night, after he'd been punched out and had landed in the hospital for most of the afternoon.

He was aware of what had happened, although as he laid there in his bed, he realized that the specific memories of the last day were pretty fuzzy. He cringed when he remembered LYDIA, and he had a vague memory of being punched and then talking to the EMTs when they were checking him out at the restaurant. He remembered Lanie and Esposito being at the hospital with him; he didn't want to bother Kate or Alexis, or his mother and he was grateful that they had apparently dropped everything to come and bail him out of the ER. He just didn't think he would be there very long so he didn't want to worry them needlessly.

As his mind went through the day, he remembered some fruit that they'd tried to make him eat at the hospital. Lanie had said was laced with some drugs that would make him grow breasts and had saved him from eating it. He'd have to thank her; he vaguely recalled her telling him that she was a doctor and he should eat a banana instead of the fruit cup because they have peels to protect them, and nobody can put breast-augmentation drugs into bananas so they were safe. He'd have to get her an extra spa day; not growing breasts was worth it. Although he still wasn't sure why the hospital would try to do that in the first place.

He knew he'd gone to the Old Haunt, but he couldn't remember much. He remembered Dave being there, and then something about Lanie being kind of upset. Damn! He wished he could remember more! Hopefully his memory would come back as his head healed.

But with his memories of the Old Haunt being very sketchy at best, he thought about Kate. He did remember that she was at the Old Haunt with him. He had a vague memory of kissing her in the middle of the bar and of being really happy, so happy that he couldn't seem to wipe the smile from his face. But...he couldn't remember anything else that was concrete; it was all just flashes, and very vague flashes. How did he get home? And where was she now?

And then as the thought of her current location entered his sleepy, confused brain, he registered the arm around his chest, and the familiar feeling of a body next to him and a head next to his on the pillow. And the smell of cherries.

Kate. She was here. With him. In his bed. At his loft. She was here.

And he couldn't stop the smile from forming on his lips as he burrowed just a little further into the pillow, turning his head just a bit toward her. He hadn't even seen her, but he could feel her next to him, feel her arm wrapped around him. And that was enough.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The next time he woke up, it was still dark. And he couldn't even see the first inklings of the new day through the windows, so he knew it was pretty early yet. Then he registered a persistent throbbing on the back of his head. Luckily, he had his head turned on the pillow, not laying directly on the sore part, and he was inhaling the wonderful cherry scent of Kate. Kate? He opened his eyes. Kate. She was there, curled up against him, still sleeping peacefully.

He really needed some water, but he didn't want to get up. He gingerly turned his head, wincing when the tender spot came in contact with the pressure on the pillow as he turned it. Thank God...there was a glass of water on his bedside table. Saying a silent thanks to whoever had put it there, he reached for it. After he shifted a bit and took a few long drinks, he settled back down into the bed. But it seemed that his movement was enough to bother Kate because she began stirring like she was starting to wake up. He watched as she looked around a bit, taking in the surroundings that he knew were strange for her. Then, once it was apparent that she'd figured out where she was, she pulled away just a bit and looked at him. She found a small grin on his face as she realized that he, too, was awake, and he was looking at her.

"Hey, Rocky." She yawned. "How do you feel?"

"Despite the pounding in my head, I feel like this is about the best way to wake up. _Much_ better than yesterday morning."

She leaned toward him and briefly touched her lips to his in a light kiss. "Good morning."

"Is it morning?"

She glanced at the clock. "Yeah. Kind of. It's a little after two."

"Well, then, good morning."

"Much as I'd like to just snuggle back into bed with you, I think you could probably use something for your head. Esposito said the doctor said you could have Tylenol. Do you have a bottle around here somewhere?"

"Bathroom. Top right right drawer."

She gave him a strange look at his answer but didn't say anything. He'd seemed pretty lucid in the small amount that he'd said, so she supposed she'd overlook one little incident of stuttering. Anyway, it was still early.

But when she got into the bathroom, she realized that he hadn't been stuttering at all. There were two columns of drawers on just the right side of the vanity alone. Who in the world needed that many drawers? So she looked in the right-most drawer on the top and found the bottle of pain reliever, just as he'd said. On her way back, she hit what she hoped was a dimmer switch by the side of the bed and illuminated the room in a pale glow of light. She crawled back into the bed and, sitting side of him, shook out a couple of pills into her hand.

"Come on; you should sit up when you take these. I don't want you to spill the water in the bed."

"Don't I have pain pills from the hospital?"

"You do. Esposito gave me the bottle. But...how much do you remember from last night?"

"Not a lot. Just bits and pieces, here and there. Why?" he asked as he followed her directions and slowly sat up. "Did they make me sick? Tell me I didn't upchuck on Esposito or something...God, he'd put a hit out on me. He knows people. You'd have to hide me..."

"No. But your reaction to pain pills is very...interesting," and also somewhat scary and disturbing, she added to herself silently, "interesting in ways that will keep our friends telling stories about you for a _long_ time. So I'd prefer to just see if the over-the-counter stuff works for you first."

He cringed, but then he felt his bruised face, and the cringe turned into a grimace, which still hurt. "Ow," he whined.

"You're probably going to have to go easy on the facial expressions for a while. Just pretend you're playing a really long game of poker."

"Can it be strip poker?" he asked hopefully. But then his residual fatigue surfaced and he gave a huge yawn.

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "No. Now take the pills," she ordered.

He did as he was told, and then she screwed the cap back on the bottle of pills. But just as she was getting ready to go put the pills back in the bathroom, she heard an exclamation of "Oh. My. God." as she felt a hand grab her wrist. And the hand had grabbed her _left_wrist was now lifting it up in the air between them, showing off the diamond ring that was on the left hand at the end of that left wrist.

"Are my eyes playing tricks on me or are you...is this...you really...does that mean...?"

The last partial question came out as sort of a squeak, and his mouth was hanging open in total astonishment. She cocked her head to the side as she regarded the suprise on his face, while he was still holding her hand up between them. "Castle...Rick...you don't remember, do you?"

"Remember? Remember what? I..." His heart was starting to beat really fast, which was causing the pounding in his head to increase in its ferocity. But as he looked between her face and the ring on her finger, he didn't even register the pounding. He didn't-couldn't-even fully voice the thought in his head, the thought that wouldn't leave once he'd seen the ring on her finger. Because he wanted that thought to be true, so, so badly. He hoped. And he was afraid that if he said it out loud, that hope would vanish as soon as the words left his mouth.

"At the Old Haunt? What do you remember about being at the Old Haunt?" Since he didn't seem to be able to remember, she was hoping to prompt him a little bit, jog his memory. Of course, he wasn't totally on his game, because if he was, he would have known what it meant to see the ring on her finger. And he'd probably be kissing her senseless right now.

"I...the bar? Who cares? What does it matter?"

"Just answer the question, Castle. What do you remember? Like, from a few minutes after you walked in."

He just wanted her to put him out of his misery about what he saw on her hand; just tell him, outright. But he knew when she got into a mood like this that she couldn't be swayed until he did what she'd asked. So he closed his eyes and tried to remember. "I came into the bar with Esposito. I saw you...with Dave? Yeah, with Dave. And Lanie. And she looked mad. But then you saw me and you...you were mad too." He opened his eyes and looked at her, a puzzled look now adorning his battered face. "You weren't happy to see me?" He sounded affronted, like he wasn't quite sure how to reconcile it that he remembered her being mad when she hadn't seen him all day. Didn't she miss him?

She swatted him on the arm with her right hand. "Yes, I was happy to see you. But not looking like that. And you idiot-you didn't even tell me that you'd been hurt! So yes, I was mad at you, you...nincompoop!"

He blinked a few times at her choice of words, and then said, "Good word. It isn't used nearly enough these days."

"Ugh!" she exclaimed. But then she took a breath and asked, "Focus, Castle. Is that all you remember?"

He thought back again, but things got fuzzy after that. "Not really much else, just flashes here and there. But I do remember..." He closed his eyes, as if trying to recapture the emotions that he'd felt from the night before. He opened his eyes and continued, "I do remember the feeling of being really happy, and I remember kissing you in the middle of the bar."

"Any idea why you kissed me?" she asked cryptically.

"Be...cause I like to? And I was having withdrawl because I hadn't seen you in over twenty four hours?"

"Maybe..." she said, trailing off and looking down toward where he still held her wrist, then looking up at him with a ghost of a smile on her face. Her next words were very softly spoken. "Or maybe it was kind of a celebratory kiss."

As her words sunk into his brain, she watched his face grow still. She'd distracted him from his surprise for a minute or two as she questioned him, but now his face returned to that impatient look that he'd had when he first saw the ring. She felt his hand move from her wrist to slide down until he was holding her hand. She looked down, and she saw his thumb stroking the ring. "It really is there," he mumbled, almost like he was trying to convince himself. When she looked back up at his face, she found that he was watching her again, and his eyes, at least the part of them that she could see, were burning with intensity. "God, Kate, please...just tell me," he pleaded.

She reached up with her right hand and stroked his jaw lightly. And before she leaned forward and touched her lips lightly to his, she uttered the most simple response to his plea, the one word that he'd resigned himself to not hearing for a long, long time.

"Yes."

He closed his eyes after he heard the word, not in preparation for the kiss, but because he wanted to savor the sound of that simple word. He was savoring it so much that he hardly even registered the subsequent kiss of the woman who had said it.

And he hardly noticed when she pulled away. His eyes were still closed, and he was making no move to open them. He just sat there on the bed, eyes closed, face expressionless. "Rick?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"You can open your eyes now."

"Shhh...I don't want to."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm afraid that I'm going to find out that this is all a dream."

She rolled her eyes at him, even though he couldn't see it. "Rick, open your eyes."

"No."

She thought about pulling on his ear, but out of pity she decided against that; he'd been abused enough in the past twelve hours. So she settled for the next best wake-up option. She leaned forward and kissed him. She moved her hand from his jaw to the back of his neck to pull him closer to her, taking care not to touch the back of his head where she knew he hit the table. She moved her lips over his seductively, and used her tongue to tease his lips open for her. Finally he complied, and responded in kind. The kiss teased and taunted, and after all that had happened in the last day and a half, just felt so damn _good_.

But Kate knew he couldn't handle much more, certainly not where the kiss had the potential to lead, not tonight. And that wasn't her intention anyway. So she broke away. The sudden loss of contact caused his eyes to fly open to search for what had happened to the cause of the pleasurable riot that had just been inflicted on his mouth.

She had to take a breath herself, but then she smiled at the look on his face. "Gotcha. You opened your eyes."

"Geez, Kate!"

"But see? I'm still here, and so is this." She pulled her hand free from his and held it up between them, eye level to him, so he couldn't help but see the ring. "It's not a dream, you doofus."

At her words, a memory stirred in his subconscious. He remembered...she called him a doofus at the Old Haunt too. And then...that's when he felt happy. And he remembered kissing her in the middle of the bar. And remembering that, hearing her call him doofus again, and of course seeing the ring on her finger, he started believing. Believing that this wasn't a dream. Believing that it was real, and that Kate was wearing the ring. And the smile started to fill his face, and there was no stopping it.

Kate watched his reaction, and she couldn't help but smile herself. Again. Oh, this would be a story to tell their kids; he didn't even _remember_ the first time she said she'd marry him! And then he didn't even _believe_ her the second time she said it. Belatedly, she realized her mind had, once again, drifted to the 'kids' topic, but for once, she didn't freak. She just filed it away to think about later.

But, she figured, third time was a charm; apparently for anything to do with marriage for him-either the number of times to get it right or the number of times his proposal would have to be accepted before he understood. So she took a breath and said again, "Yes."

If it was possible, his smile grew just a bit larger at hearing the second coming of the word he never thought he'd hear for a long time, at least in that context. He grabbed her quickly and pulled her into a tight embrace, almost as if he was afraid she would vanish. He buried his face in her neck and just held her. When he finally pulled back, he uttered, "Wow." It was the only thing that he could think to say right then. But then, involuntarily, another yawn escaped him.

The yawn jostled her back into the present, and she remembered his injuries. He didn't need to be sitting up half the night talking. She'd made him understand, and that was enough for now. They could talk more tomorrow when he had more sleep. She tried to push him down into the pillows. "Come on, Big Rick, you need some more sleep."

But he resisted. "No. Not yet. We're...engaged! Hey, don't I get a kiss?"

She raised her eyebrow at him. "Rick, I just kissed you."

"Well, I want another one," he verbally pouted. "One is never enough, you know," he added with a cocky grin.

"Rick, you had a head injury. You're really lucky you're not puking your guts out right now! So if I give you another kiss, will you lay down and go back to sleep?"

"Only if you snuggle up with me afterwards. So I can sleep, you know."

"I think that can be arranged," she told him before resting her arms on his shoulders and touching her lips to his again. She kept the kiss sweet, not short, but she didn't deepen it. After a long minute, she pulled away from him, and then gently pushed him down toward the pillows again.

"Wow. I'm getting married," he said with a certain amount of awe as he settled himself horizontally. "Hard to believe there was a time when the thought of getting married again made me feel ill."

"Do you feel ill now?" she asked.

"No," he mumbled as he closed his eyes.

"Good. Because I'd hate for you to be feeling ill about it when I'm just starting to get somewhat used to the whole marriage idea myself."

After turning off the dimmer switch, she snuggled herself against him and was just starting to get comfortable. But then, after a few minutes, he shifted again and said "No. This isn't right. It's really wrong. We can't do this."

She wondered what he was talking about, and she was struck by the serious tone, determined tone of his voice. "What?"

"This won't work. It's not right."

Her heart caught in her throat. She froze. It was wrong? They couldn't do it? Was he saying...they couldn't get married?

She'd just gone out on the biggest limb of her life by putting on that ring and giving him the big 'yes', and now he was chopping that limb right off the tree? He was reneging? He _didn't _want to marry her? After the initial feelings of paralyzing shock, she felt the emotions so quickly threaten to overtake her. How could he, when she'd put herself out there for him? She sat up and turned around in the bed so quickly that it made him shrink back more against the pillows in surprise. When he saw the fire in her eyes, he blanched. "What?"

"Why the hell did you give me that ring then?"

His only thought was 'huh?' But Kate when she's mad...sometimes it was just better to go along with her and see if you could diffuse her anger along the way. "Uh, because I love you and I want to spend my life with you?" He hoped that was a good answer. But then he realized that she was sitting up, so he continued, "Hey, since you're sitting up, let's fix this. Can you crawl over me while I shimmy over to the other side?"

But she didn't move, she just looked at him and voiced the same thought that had run through his mind only moments before. "Huh?"

In his tired haze, the confusion warring with the anger on her face was adorable. Although he didn't really know why she was angry. But he gave another big yawn, and then he just continued with his previous thought, since she wasn't making any attempt to move.

"Sorry, honey, but when you're with me, I just can't sleep on that side. It doesn't feel right. You have to be on this side, and I have to be over there. Come on," he started whining, "Will you move already? If you don't, I'm probably going to turn over in the middle of the night to hold you and I'll end up falling out of bed. I'm not used to this."

"You want to switch places?" she asked incredulously.

"Uh...yeah. Isn't that what I just said? The whole time in Florida, you know, you were on the left and I was on the right. It just feels wrong like this."

"It feels...wrong..." she trailed off, and then as she realized that she had jumped to the worst possible conclusion and he'd only been talking about their positions relative to each other in the bed, she reached out and thumped him in the chest.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Castle, you doofus!" she said in a low, but ferocious voice. "What am I supposed to think when right after I say yes to marrying you, right after you say that the thought of marriage has almost made you ill, practically the next words out of your mouth are that 'it's really wrong' and 'we can't do this?' Huh?"

His eyes-or the good one anyway-grew a little wider as he said "Oh. You thought...you thought I'd changed my mind? Is that why you asked me why I gave you the ring?" She just glared at him, and he could see the answer was a yes. "God, no! Kate! No! Of course I haven't changed my mind about _that_!" He reached up and caressed her face with his hand, needing to touch her to convey that he was serious. "There is no way that us getting married could ever be wrong."

At his softly spoken but confident answer, she felt the butterflies in her stomach quiet just a bit. And she felt a lot of her unease also slip away. "Good answer, buster. Because now that I finally have my brain wrapped around this whole engagement thing, don't go thinking that you can get out of it that easily."

"I don't want to. Get out of it, that is. Remember, you and me? Gorilla glue. You're stuck with me, dollface. And for the record, the thought of marrying you does _not _ make me feel ill. I feel...happy. And excited. In fact, if I wasn't so tired and my brain cells weren't doing the dull throb dance inside my head, I would seriously be considering kidnapping you again. Destination, Vegas."

At his words, she remembered what she'd said to Lanie about that very same thing. And knowing his impatience and his persistence, she didn't doubt that he would have tried it. "Down boy. We've got a lot to work through before we walk down that aisle. And can the dollface monikers, okay?"

"Okay. But what things?"

"That's not a discussion for right now. Right now, you need some sleep. Hell, I need some sleep too. But first things first." And she made a move to crawl over him to the other side of the bed. Except he didn't do his shimmying like he'd suggested; he just grinned up at her as she straddled him.

"I think I like this even better than 'my side' and 'your side'," he told her in a cocky tone, giving her a sly grin that matched.

"I'm sure you do. And under different circumstances, I might too. But for tonight, Rocky, move it over to the other side and get your mind out of the gutter."

He knew she was right; the exhaustion was overtaking him. But when she'd crawled over him, he just couldn't resist. They'd always bantered back and forth so well, their bantering sessions fraught with innuendo, and that was a prime opportunity that he just couldn't pass up. But he now just scooted over in the bed and made room for her on what was now her side of his bed. Soon to be their bed, but like she'd just said, there were things to be worked out. Like getting her to move in. But tomorrow was early enough for him to resume his efforts on that campaign.

When they were settled once again, she snuggled into his side and draped her arm over his chest casually. But he knew which arm it was that was draped over him, and he found her hand, rubbing his thumb over the ring that she now wore there. "You are such a girl sometimes. Yes, it's still there," she reassured him.

"I like it there."

"You really have to leave it alone or it'll get dingy and it won't sparkle," she chided.

"I'll buy you another one."

"I'm sure you would."

"Kate?"

"What, Castle?"

"Love you. And I'm happy we're engaged. I don't feel ill at all."

She smiled against his shoulder. "Love you too. And strangely enough, I don't feel ill either."

"See? It was meant to be." She could almost feel the grin on his face.

"Go to sleep, Rick."

"Good night, Kate."

"Good night."

And again, they slept.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They slept peacefully until the alarm on Kate's phone sounded. She had to practically vault over Castle to get to the phone before the alarm woke him, because it was on the opposite nightstand from where she now was, courtesy of her switching places with Castle in the middle of the night. Switching places...the thing that was 'really wrong'. After she silenced her phone, she relaxed back into the pillows and reflected that it was kind of funny now, how they'd gotten their wires crossed yet again. Apparently they did still need to work on their communication-or rather, _mis_communication-a bit more.

She carefully crawled out of bed and tucked the sheets around the still-sleeping Rick. Taking her bag into the bathroom, she set about figuring out the shower and getting herself ready for work. Castle's shower took up one huge section of his bathroom. She was sure if he was there with her, he would have happily pointed out that it was big enough for two. And it was. She felt a smile form on her face as she thought of all of the time they'd spent in the shower at the house in Florida. A lot of time. And not all of that time was spent showering. Looking around the shower area, she was certain they could spend a lot of time not showering here too.

She was worried that she'd wake Rick up when she dried her hair with the hairdryer, but he slept on. When she was all put together for the day ahead, she gave the good side of his face a little kiss and then went to the kitchen to see if she could start the coffee maker.

When she had the coffee brewing, she heard the door open and turned around in suprise to see Martha coming in. "Oh, Kate, dear. Hello!" Kate could tell that the older woman was surprised by her presence.

"Martha...hi. I was just...making coffee." The statement didn't explain anything, really, about what she was doing there this early in the morning, but it was all she could think to say at the time.

"Please tell me your apartment didn't blow up again. Not that it isn't wonderful to see you here, but oh, that would be absolutely tragic! To have that happen a second time..."

"No. Uh, my apartment is fine."

"Oh, that's good. Although I wouldn't mind another pat-down by a hunky FBI guy, if you could arrange that sometime." She winked at Kate.

Kate smiled. "Believe me, the hunkier those FBI types get, the more bland and boring they seem to become. You'd probably be bored inside of five minutes."

"Trust me, kiddo, give Martha Rodgers some hunky, and bland and boring will _not_ be an issue."

Kate gave a little laugh, and then looked down at her hand. She knew Martha's questioning about her apartment was a very subtle and polite way to ask why she was here. And she knew she had to say something to Martha about the change in hers and Rick's relationship, but what? And how much did Martha already know?

"Uh, Martha..." she started. "Uh, has Rick told you that we're, uh, together now?"

Martha stared at her. "Kiddo, are you serious? That's wonderful! It's about time. Did all of this happen in Florida?"

Some of the tension that was inside Kate eased at her words. "Yes, although not right away. But when things did happen, they, uh, happened pretty fast." She punctuated her statement by holding up her left hand so Martha could see the ring that she wore there. Some part of Kate figured that it would just be better to treat it like pulling off a band-aid-just get it over with all at once.

She never thought she'd see Martha Rodgers shocked speechless. But that was exactly what she was witnessing right now. The older woman's mouth had dropped open to form a little 'o', and her eyes had widened just a bit. "Is that...Kate, dear...are you telling me that Richard _proposed_ to you? As in, proposed _marriage? Richard?"_

The shock on the other woman's face and in her words was truly priceless. "Yes, Martha, he most certainly did."

The older woman dropped herself heavily into one of the chairs by the counter, dramatically fanning herself with her hand.

"Marriage. My goodness. I can certainly imagine him proposing any one of a number of other things that a mother shouldn't really be thinking about in terms of her son, but this... Wonders never cease." She shook her head as Kate walked over to the coffee maker. "Well, kiddo, I have to say I'm happy for you. And him. You're good for him." And then, apparently, she'd recovered enough because she got up and rounded the counter, pulling Kate into a hug. "Congratulations, darling. I really am happy for you both. Although I think he's getting the better end of the deal," she finished, giving Kate a little wink. "Now let me look at that rock!" she laughed, pulling Kate's hand in closer.

"Thank you, Martha." Kate couldn't think of anything else to say, but she was warmed by the praise and the reaction from Rick's mother, especially after the reaction from Alexis the night before.

She was left wondering if Martha could read her mind, because just after Martha released Kate's hand, she said, "Does Alexis know?"

Kate looked down. "Yes. She does."

Martha was nothing if not astute. "I take it that she didn't have an altogether favorable reaction?"

"You could say that. We talked a bit last night. I think she might have been okay with us dating or being a couple if she'd actually been able to _see_ us as a couple first, get used to things a bit, before Rick sprung the marriage thing on her. But of course he had to tell her right away, and I think that was just too much for her."

Martha nodded. "It's been just the two of them for a long time. Even when Gina was around, it was Rick and Gina, or Rick and Alexis; not much with the three of them together, and certainly not much with Gina and Alexis. She had to share her dad all of a sudden, and that was the downside, but unfortunately there was no upside when she never really got close with Gina."

"It's not even that. She knew we were...uh, dating, and by all accounts she was fine with that. When I talked to her on the phone on Sunday night, she was happy and bubbly and excited. Then Rick told her that he'd given me the ring, and that happy, bubbly kid was gone."

"Wait..." Martha said, "I'm sorry, but I have to digress for a moment. She already knew you were involved? Romantically?"

Kate nodded. "Since early last week. Rick told her one of the times he talked to her from Florida."

"And she didn't even tell me! Oh, that girl!" But she went from mock outrage to puffed-up pride as she said, "That child definitely has the Rodgers acting gene! She knew about you two for an entire week and I never suspected a thing!" She shook her head in grandmotherly pride. "But anyway, I do suppose you're right. Everyone has their breaking points. She's the camel, and the whole marriage thing is probably the straw that broke her back."

After nodding, she was silent for a moment before she confessed, "I don't want to mess this up, Martha."

Martha pulled her in for another quick hug. "Things will work out, kiddo. Just give her time."

Kate nodded again. Then with a start, she realized that Martha probably didn't know anything about Rick's predicament the day before. "Oh, Martha, I almost forgot! Rick had a bit of an accident yesterday...did you happen to hear about it?"

"An accident? Oh, no-he didn't try to use the police barricade railings like a balance beam again, did he?"

Kate blinked at Martha. "No, but I _will_ have to hear about that one sometime. No, he tried to intervene in an argument yesterday at the lunch with his publisher, and some guy punched him, he hit his head on the table and that knocked him out for a time. So they took him to the hospital and he had a CT scan, which apparently came back normal. I gave him some Tylenol around two this morning so he'll need a few more when he wakes up."

"Goodness! He knocked himself out and they only gave him Tylenol?"

"Oh, no. They gave him narcotics, but Rick on narcotics is not for the faint of heart. Let's just say he needs his own personal attendant. So I thought it might be better to see if he could handle it with just Tylenol."

"I sense a story here, dear." Martha had developed a gleam in her eye.

"Martha, there are many stories here," Kate confirmed. "Sometime soon, we'll have to sit down and swap stories. But for now, I do need to get to work after I have some coffee. Would you like a cup?"

"You go ahead without me, dear. Right now, I have a date with a pillow. Last night was...a peregrination of the senses" she trailed off with dramatic flair as she heard footsteps, briefly leaving Kate puzzled and wondering. Then they both looked in the direction of the sound to see Alexis come into the kitchen, already dressed for school. The girl went over and hugged her grandmother, giving her a 'Good Morning' greeting. Kate busied herself with the coffee, so it didn't look like she was waiting around for her own hug. She knew that level of familiarity was highly presumptuous right now, and she had no desire to put the girl on the spot.

So as she poured her coffee, she glanced over toward Alexis. "Good morning, Alexis. Sleep well?" she asked casually.

"Pretty well, all things considered," the girl said as she stepped around her grandmother, giving an answer loaded with subtext. Kate saw Martha shoot her a look behind Alexis' back, almost as if she was saying 'you weren't kidding'.

"Good," Kate answered, ignoring the hidden meaning. Right before Martha headed up to her room, she grabbed an ice pack from the freezer. When she was gone, Kate grabbed a banana from the bowl on the counter. Sitting down at the counter in with her coffee and the banana, Kate finally broke the silence. "Alexis?"

"Yes?" she answered politely.

"After talking with your grandmother for the last several minutes, I'm just kind of wondering something..."

"What is it?"

"She obviously was just getting home...was she out whatevering all night?" Kate asked slyly, remembering the conversation from the night before, when Alexis had described what she called it when Martha would finally return home after being gone all night.

Alexis whipped her head around to look at Kate, and she couldn't stop the grin from lighting her face. Somewhere in the back of her mind, even though she couldn't analyze it, Alexis was surprised, but pleased, that Kate was not only obviously paying attention when she'd said that about her Grams last night, but that she'd picked up on her Grams getting the ice pack from the freezer and had still remembered her description this morning.

"Without a doubt," Alexis finally replied, nodding.

"She called it 'a peregrination of the senses'," Kate told her. Then after they'd thought about it, the girl and the detective both looked at each other and gave a little grimace.

"I do see your point now...I think I like 'whatevering' a lot better," Kate admitted.

"Told you," Alexis said knowingly.

And they shared another small grin before Kate bit into her banana. And it seemed as though another small thaw may have just taken place on the polar island of Alexis. And Kate hoped that she could figure out a way to make the warming trend continue.

* * *

_**I couldn't resist giving them one more misunderstanding, with the switching sides of the bed thing. Has that ever happened to anyone? You know, where you get used to one side of the bed, and then you go to a hotel or something, get in bed, and you get in on the 'wrong' side? **_

_**By the way, 'peregrination' is not a word I tend to use. But it seemed to me that it would be something that Martha would say in her own dramatic way. So if anyone thinks it feels 'off' and has a better suggestion, please let me know.**_

_**I was on a little vacation with my family while I was writing this chapter. Coincidentally, we were visiting another island one day (not Sanibel/Captiva) and I was thinking about this story and what our main characters could possibly do on this island. Some parts of this island are pretty exclusive...there's a very famous hotel and we were going to go walk through the lobby, just to see it, but there was an employee standing there and turning people away. You either had to be a guest of the hotel or you had to pay $10/person to be able to go inside and see the lobby. Admission...to tour a hotel lobby. Oh, well.**_

_**Then, in a souvenir shop later, I almost laughed like a lunatic when I saw a bright orange pair of sunglasses with rhinestones around the frame! (Think chapter 55, if you don't know what I'm talking about.) I restrained myself from laughing, but it was really hard. I really should have bought them. **_

_**And once again, thanks so much for reading.**_


	77. Chapter 77

_**First, this chapter is long. WAY long...almost twice as long as my longest chapter. But I said that I would wrap this story up with only one more chapter, so I didn't want to renege on that promise. But it turns out that I had a lot to wrap up, so this chapter got very long. So if you don't like long chapters or don't have a lot of time, consider yourself forewarned.**_

_**Thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter. There weren't as many as in previous chapters, but that's okay. I figure it's one of two things: either you've gotten bored and impatient because it wasn't quite the end, or you're waiting for the very LAST chapter. Hope it's the second scenario...and here it is.**_

_**If anyone has ever wondered, I originally intended this story to take place sometime in February. There aren't any references to Valentine's Day, so you can use your imagination to figure out if this happened before or after V-day. I even looked at tidal charts for February, 2011, when I started to write this, if you can believe that. I know I totally glossed over the Josh thing when I started this, but I'd hoped (probably like a lot of other people) that he'd be gone by February. Alas, no dice. And he'll even be there in the S4 premiere! Who woulda thunk it?**_

_**So anyway, I'm stressing a bit about this one. I know I say that a lot. But for this one, I really am, because it's the LAST ONE. I mean, how do you end a 77 chapter long story that you've spent over 9 months conceiving, thinking about and writing? It has to be spectacular, and it has to have closure, or at least an appropriate amount of closure. I hope it's worth it. **_

_**Thanks, of course, to everyone who took the time to review or PM me with your comments. They are, as always, very much appreciated. And XxBlazeStormxX, thanks! I'm not sure if you were the longest, but I did very much enjoy your notes and comments. Thanks for sticking with me!**_

_**Minor (as in, very minor) spoilers for 'The Third Man'. And as always, the standard disclaimers continue to apply.**_

* * *

After all of the events of the day before with Jonathan Hill's case, the start of Kate's second day back at work proved to be just the opposite of her first. There were no new murders, which was a good thing, but it also meant that most of her morning was spent on paperwork. And paperwork always seemed to drag. But in a way, she was also grateful, because it meant that if they didn't get a call, she'd be able to sneak away go over to Rick's loft to check on him during the day. Martha was there, and Kate had talked to Rick briefly before she'd left, but she still wanted to check on him. And somehow, the Captain had apparently been filled in on the events and revelations of the prior day and evening, so he stopped by her desk to offer not only congratulations, but also told her to take a long lunch and check on her 'family situation'.

Family. The concept of a family-such a normal thing-sounded so completely foreign when someone used it to describe her life. But there it was, and it was basically true. She was getting a new family. Or rather, a dramatic addition to her current family, which for so long had just consisted of her dad.

So when the caseload was slow, and her captain had told her to take more time off to boot, she wasn't going to argue. Well, she did as a matter of principle and habit, but she backed off after a glare from the captain, and then she simply thanked him and told him that she would pass along to Rick his wishes for a speedy recovery. And also that the captain hoped that his collision with the table had knocked some sense into his sorry head so he didn't go trying to intervene in other people's fights in the future.

So after stopping to pick up some takeout on the way, she let herself into the loft with the extra key that Rick had told her about that morning. She was surprised to find him in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. When she walked into the kitchen, she was welcomed with with a surprised smile. "You're here? Why, Detective, did you come back here to check up on me?"

"Someone needs to, and since I wasn't sure when Martha would be up, and I was free, you get me." She walked around the counter and after setting down the takeout bags, gave him a quick kiss on his good cheek before putting her arms around him.

He returned her embrace and said, "I'll definitely take you." He tightened his arms around her a little more. "This feels good."

"Yeah." She pulled back to look at his face. "How's your head feeling?"

"Like my new lump is trying to audition to be the drummer in a rock band. The Tylenol you made me take this morning is wearing off now. But I still have a headache, so I'd rather have one of the pain pills from the hospital. Where did you put them, anyway?"

"I hid them," she told him bluntly. "You can't have them. But you seem to be doing pretty well without them anyway." She was aiming for forcefully upbeat with her tone.

"You _hid_ my pills? Why?" He sounded as though the thought was ridiculous to him.

"Rick, I know you don't remember much from last night. But the rest of us do. Trust me-you and narcotics do not go well together." She started lifting containers out of the bags.

"Wait...you already told me about this, didn't you? I asked you...I asked you if I upchucked on Esposito. You said no, but if I didn't do that, why can't I have the pills? Did I upchuck on someone else? Or did I pass out and you couldn't carry me?"

"No, nothing like that. Worse, actually. Well, kind of."

"Kate," he said, his tone warning her to get on with it.

"Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you. If you'd upchucked on someone, that would actually be better because it's kind of a more standard reaction. But no, you have to turn into the world's happiest and most inappropriate beat up guy." She began to plate some of the food onto the dishes that Castle had handed to her.

"Huh? Oh, forget it. I couldn't have been that bad, no matter what I did. Just give me the pills."

"No."

"No?"

"No. Trust me."

"Come on. Kate, I want the pain pills." He tried for the ultra-stern voice.

His voice sounded good to him, but it apparently didn't phase her. "Again, no."

"They're pain pills, not acid or ecstacy or some other illegal mind-altering concoction. How bad could it have been?"

"Oh, where should I start?" She took a small bite of food and then continued talking when her mouth was empty again. "First, you didn't call me or Alexis, which we _will_ be discussing later, mark my words. But actually, that may have been more just plain stupidity rather than the drugs. But anyway, next you apparently scarred Esposito by wanting to have a peeing contest with him to see who could make the most bubbles in the toilet at the hospital."

"No!"

"Yes. Then you mooned Lanie."

"What?" Then, vintage Castle resurfaced for a time, and he quipped, "Did she enjoy the show?"

"No," Kate said bluntly, wiping the cocky grin off of his face. "Then, to hear Lanie tell it, next there was something about you whining about not wanting to eat some fruit-"

"Hey! I remember that! But Lanie told me not to eat it. She told me there were hormones in the fruit that would make me grow breasts, so I should have something else. I really have to thank her the next time I see her...I don't want breasts!"

"That's not exactly how I heard it, but we'll get to that in a bit. And I didn't even hear that one until this morning at work; between all of the other stuff you did, they didn't even have time to tell me about that until this morning. But after you got to the Old Haunt, you started spewing intimate details of our sex life-"

His eyes got big and he automatically denied it. "I did not!" She would have killed him if he'd done that, so he couldn't have done that. Could he?

"You did too, so shut up about it!" She took a breath. "But then you went to the bathroom, and you were apparently singing Katy Perry's E.T. Poor Ryan."

"Poor Ryan? Why poor Ryan? My singing isn't _that_ bad. He's heard me sing before."

"Not while you were in the bathroom and were using the zipper on your fly like the hottest new musical instrument there ever was. And trying to get some random stranger to join you in a duet."

His mouth dropped open automatically to start saying some sort of response, or rebuttal, or something. But no sound came out, because when it came right down to it, he couldn't think of anything to say to that. He did all of that? How could he not remember? The evening, what he could remember of it, seemed fairly normal. Then he smiled as a thought occurred to him. Oh, now he was getting it...it probably never really happened, and now they were trying to punk him like he and Kate had tried to punk Lanie and the guys, by saying he did all of this really crazy stuff. They probably sat around all night and dreamed all of this up while he was in la-la land.

He shook his head. "Nope. Sorry. I'm the storyteller around here, my love. There's no way I did that without remembering it. You're trying to turn the punk back on me. I get it. No way."

"Way," she said, arguing back and reaching for her phone. "Here. Esposito showed me this and then he sent it to me when I told him you didn't remember a lot about last night. He said you'd probably try to deny it all. Believe me, there was a lot more. But this should give you some proof that we're not making this up." She handed the phone to him, and he took it hesitantly, wondering what he was about to see.

He watched himself, laying in a hospital bed and Lanie was explaining something about apples and bananas. When he got to the end and heard his own comment about 'girly breasts', his mouth dropped open a bit before he swallowed somewhat nervously. Kate looked at him as he watched the video, trying to hide the smirk on her face. When he was done, he put the phone on the counter and slid it back to her. He said nothing for a few minutes as he took a couple of bites of his food. And then when he did finally speak again, he asked her simply, "So where is that bottle of Tylenol?"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Later, after she'd cleaned up the leftovers and stashed them in the fridge, she noticed that he looked tired again. "Come on, big Rick, let's get you to bed."

He looked at her in wonder, and then his face slowly broke into a grin. "Do you..." He swallowed. "Do you realize what it would have done to me a month ago to have you stand in my kitchen and talk about getting me in bed?"

"Yeah. Well. Wasn't going to happen. Not then, anyway. And actually, I do know where your mind is going, and _that_ isn't going to happen now either. Because it's _to_ bed, sweetie pie, not _in_ bed. "

"Semantics, semantics," he said as he shuffled toward his bedroom, Kate behind him, prodding him slightly with her index finger.

After she got him settled into bed, he looked up at her with puppy dog eyes. Or rather, one pathetically swollen eye and one puppy dog eye. "Lay down with me?" he asked in a tone that was close to pleading.

She hadn't really taken that much time; they'd actually eaten pretty quickly. So she sighed like she was put out and frustrated, but more on principle than by the fact that she really was put out and frustrated. But she kicked her heels off and settled down on the bed against him, with his arm around her. "Don't think this is going to become a habit, buster. It's just because you're injured and I'm having a nice moment. Oh, and Montgomery told me to take care of you."

"So you're snuggling with me just because Montgomery told you to?"

"Uh huh. Police orders. I have to obey them."

"Remind me to thank Montgomery," he chuckled.

She didn't really want to bring it up now, but they needed to talk before tonight. "Castle..." she started.

"Uh oh," he said right away.

"What?"

"You called me 'Castle'. So I know I'm in trouble or you're annoyed with me about something. What else did I do last night?"

"It's not that. It's from what you did on Sunday when we got home. Alexis."

"Alexis? What did I do to her?"

"Rick, you turned her world upside down."

"Kate, I'm not following you."

"You know, for a guy who is a wonderful father and has a great kid, you're really clueless sometimes."

"Well are you going to clue me in then?"

"Castle, here's a newsflash. You can be a good dad and be honest with your daughter without telling her absolutely _everything_. There are some things that you're allowed to hold back for her own good."

"Such as?"

"Such as, you had to go and tell her that you proposed to me. And she hadn't even seen us hold hands, or kiss, or even do anything remotely 'couple-y' first. And knowing that she knew that, I had to tell her last night that it's now official," she said, holding up her hand and showing off the ring she wore there. "It was too much, too soon. The poor kid was blindsided, Rick."

He grabbed her outstretched hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss. "She's had a new stepmother before," he said, and then immediately regretted bringing up an ex-wife as they were laying together like they were.

"How long did you date Gina?"

"I don't know, six or eight months? But I've known you for years. Alexis was even there the first time I met you! She knows you!"

"But you basically work with me. We were never involved. Think about it, Rick. You can't tell me that you wouldn't have been blindsided if I'd walked in one day and announced that Esposito and I were getting married."

At her direction, he did think about it. And she was right. He _would_ have been blindsided, on quite a few levels. But she continued talking. "I know from what you've said that your mother had a lot of relationships when you were growing up. But it hasn't been that way for Alexis, has it? You've been married twice, sure, but one of those was to her mother. Have you paraded a bunch of other women in front of her?"

He closed his eyes. She had a point, one that he'd neglected to think about in his excitement over being home, and seeing his little girl again, and his changed relationship with Kate. "I just...I don't like to keep things from her. And she knew something was up, and she asked! I want her to trust me so I try to be honest with her. I'm the cool dad." He said his last sentence in some lame attempt to explain his actions.

"I know. But you were honest that we were involved. And being honest with her doesn't mean telling her every little thing. And geez, Castle, she can ask all she wants...just use your poker face. She's a great kid, but she _is_ still a kid. And her dad, who is the most important person in her life, just announced out of the blue that he made a decision that would change her life, and she had no idea that it was coming, at least not that soon."

"Hey, she knew...she knew we were involved, and that it was serious, and she was happy about that," he protested, trying to find some reasonable justification for what he'd done.

"Rick, how often do people go from not dating someone to being engaged in two weeks?"

"Not too often, I guess." He sighed. "But she was fine on Sunday night after we talked about it a little bit."

"Was she really fine? Or did she maybe just want to make you feel better? Because you were happy and she didn't want to make you feel bad?" She let her question hang in the air for a minute. "Rick, maybe she _was_ reasonably okay after you talked, but if she's like a lot of the female population, she probably kept thinking about it and to some degree, obsessing about it, all of yesterday, so by last night she was probably feeling not quite so fine anymore."

"So you talked to her last night, I assume? How was she? I don't remember much about getting home last night."

"I showed her that I was wearing the ring, like I said, because I figured that she already knew you gave it to me and was having some issues with it, so at that point, I thought it would be worse if I didn't show it to her. But the whole thing was just kind of...uncomfortable. And believe me, you'll owe me for making me do that by myself. And speaking of owing, you owe her some groveling just like you do me, for not calling either one of us when you went to the hospital. Do you know she thought that since you were obviously hurt and she never found out until you got home, that she was just out of the loop now that I was in the picture? Like she didn't matter enough for you to tell her that you were hurt, especially now that we were together?"

"It had nothing to do with that!" he said forcefully, a little too forcefully actually, because the strength of the statement hurt his head. Pressing his fingers to his forehead, he closed his eyes briefly and continued. "I just didn't think it would take that long and I didn't want to worry either one of you. I thought I could be in and out and I'd just tell you about it afterwards. Then they wanted to run tests, and they wanted someone there to be responsible for me, and by then they'd given me some drugs, so I called Lanie and Esposito."

"I think it calmed her a little bit when I told her that I didn't know either. Which, like I said, we _will_ be talking about and you _will_ be doing an appropriate amount of groveling to both of us. But anyway, with everything that happened, she said she felt like she doesn't have a home anymore."

She could feel his head turn on the pillow to look at her, as if he was trying to make sure that he heard her correctly. "Doesn't have a home? That's ridiculous! That's-"

"-Totally justified, and probably the normal reaction of any teenager who has just found out that her sole parent, out of the blue, is getting married and she knew almost nothing about him even being serious with someone, and she knows she's not the only woman in his life anymore, _especially_ when she's also feeling displaced and unimportant because she found out that the aforementioned parent got hurt and she's just about the last person to find out."

"But I didn't...she's not...God. My head hurts. I screwed up, didn't I?"

"Yup." She didn't mince any words, but she reached over and patted him on the chest in a comforting gesture.

"Okay, since you seem to know so much more about her mental state than I do, tell me what to do."

"Geez, Castle, I don't know! This is new territory for me, too. The thing is, I just put myself in her shoes, and it wasn't hard to see why she was feeling the way she was feeling. But what you should do? I don't know...talk to her? Reassure her a little bit? No, scratch that. Reassure her a lot. Apologize for not calling her from the hospital."

"I can do that. Today is Tuesday, right?" Kate nodded. "Good. She gets home early today. No clubs."

"Good. Then why don't you sleep now, and you can talk to her when she comes home?"

"Can you get off early?" he asked hopefully, and she knew where he was going with that question.

"No. And even if I could, I wouldn't. This is your hole to dig yourself out of. Alexis and I had our talk last night. Now she needs to talk to you, just you. Alone."

"How did your talk go?"

"As well as could be expected, for me having to try to reassure _your_ daughter after _you_ made her feel uncomfortable in _her own_ home and with _her own_ family."

"Ouch."

"But true. I was flying blind, Castle. As I told Alexis, I've never dated anyone with a child before, so this is all new to me."

"Well, from this experienced parent, it sounds like you're doing a pretty good job figuring my kid out."

"Thanks. But please, will you try to keep yourself sober and uninjured so you can be the one to have the heavy conversations with her?"

"Gladly," he chuckled, but then put his hand up to his head as he realized that it was kind of painful.

And with that, Kate knew that she had to get back to the station. She eased herself out of the cocoon of his arms and leaned over to give him a kiss. "Get some sleep, okay?"

"You have to go?" She nodded. "What time will you be home tonight?" he asked on a yawn.

Home. He'd just called his loft home, as in _her home_. Like she lived there. She knew what he'd said yesterday, about her moving in, but they hadn't even had a chance to discuss it yet. And now he was acting like he was just assuming things. Big things. But she wasn't one to give him any leeway with his grand assumptions, so she purposely misunderstood as she answered him. "Well, Rick, I thought I was coming here instead of going home tonight. I did agree to stay over for a few days. But if you'd rather that I went home, that's okay too." And she waited.

It took him a little longer than it might have if he hadn't been tired and hurting, but he was still pretty fast. She saw when he registered what she said, because his good eye opened just a bit wider and he started to sputter. "No, I meant here...not your place...no, you need to come here. Stay here." Then he noticed the beginnings of a smile on her face, and he realized what was going on. "Oh, not funny, Beckett. You knew what I was talking about. I'm injured...you shouldn't mess with me like that."

"Yes, I knew what you were talking about. But you're assuming, Rick. And dictating. We haven't talked about anything like that, and while obviously," she said as she waved the hand with the ring on it, "we're going to be living together at some point, we are _not_ there yet. So be careful with your assumptions or it's going to be a long time before we _are_ there."

"We're going to discuss it. But for now, what time will you be _returning to the loft_ tonight?" he asked, emphasizing the words so she didn't accuse him of any more assuptions.

She smiled. "Not sure. I'll give you a call. And if you need more time with Alexis, alone, let me know, okay? I don't want to crowd her while she works through this."

He gave her a tired smile in return. She was so wonderful about Alexis, really wanting to help her and not make things uncomfortable for her, and seemingly understanding her almost better than he could lately. "You're amazing, you know that?"

"Yeah, well. Get some sleep. Police orders." She gave him a kiss and a pat on his chest, and she let herself out of the loft while sleep overtook his tired body.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He awoke later to some stiffness in his neck. He was still in the exact same position that he was in when Kate had left, so the stiffness probably came from him sleeping so deeply that he didn't move. He gently looked around and found that he still had a bit of time before Alexis got home, enough time for a quick shower to wake him up and clean up a bit.

Thirty minutes later, he sat on the couch in the living room trying to concentrate on the laptop that sat in front of him. He'd taken more of the over-the-counter pain relievers, but it only diminished his headache to a dull ache rather than eliminating it completely. But when the choice was a dull ache but lucidity versus pain-free but loss of inhibitions and even memory, he'd take the dull ache with the lucidity.

When he heard the key in the door, it was a welcome distraction. He looked up to see a cascade of fiery red hair slide gracefully through the door. She looked distracted, like she had a lot on her mind, not like the vibrant teenager of a couple of days ago, who was excited to be presented with souvenir clothing that she actually liked.

He set his laptop down on the coffee table as she turned around from closing the door and stopped short as she saw him. "Dad!" she said, rushing forward. "Are you supposed to be out of bed? How do you feel?"

As she sat by him on the couch, he reached forward and pulled her into a hug. "A lot better now that you're here."

She didn't say anything to his comment, but her hug was just a little tighter than it normally was, and lasted just a little longer. He didn't let her go until he sensed her pulling away, and then he gave her one last quick squeeze and a kiss on the side of her head before he finally let her go. When she pulled back and saw his face again, he could see the worry in her eyes as she took in his battered features.

"Those aliens really got you, huh?" she quipped, referring to her comment from last night when he'd come home. But at the puzzled look on his face, she realized he might not remember it, so she said "Never mind. But how do you feel?"

"Honestly? At it's best, my head still has a dull ache. And the face hurts. I'll probably have to practice my poker face more often than I usually do," he joked, silently apologizing for basically stealing Kate's words from the night before, even though he figured he would be better off not mentioning Kate practically right after his daughter got home.

She nodded, but leaned in to examine his eye. He let her for a minute or two, but then he gently pushed her back and said, "I know you're probably trying to figure out the science of swelling so you can write a report on me-I _am_ a pretty interesting subject, after all-but why don't you just take some pictures at different times as it heals and leave it at that? I got enough people poking and prodding and examining me yesterday."

She leaned back and gave him one of her sweet Alexis smiles. "I _wasn't_ going to write a report on you. And really dad, don't you get enough press without me doing a report on you too? But that _is_ a good idea...to take pictures. Let me get my camera."

As she got up, he put his arm on hers to stop her. "Later. The swelling isn't going to disappear right away, unfortunately. Right now, though, I want to know how _you're_ feeling."

"Me?" Alexis asked innocently, even though the look in her expressive blue eyes gave away the fact that she knew exactly what he was talking about. "Well, school was kind of boring today. Our chem lab got cancelled because Mr. Meyers was out sick and the sub couldn't handle it. So we just had a study hall, but I didn't really have a lot to do because I already-"

"Alexis," Rick interrupted, laying a hand on her shoulder. She stopped suddenly, and he continued. "You know that's not what I meant. You've had a lot thrown at you the last couple of days. I know you and Kate talked last night, and now you've had some time to digest that. And I don't know exactly what you talked about, and I'm sorry I wasn't in any state to talk to you myself."

"Yeah, you were pretty out of it. That poor lamp," she trailed off.

"What lamp?"

"The one in your room that you crashed into last night. You've really got to stop crashing into furniture, dad. It's not good for your overall health."

He would have liked to find out more about the lamp, but he was so encouraged by his daughter's joking demeanor that he wanted to push this conversation forward while she was seemingly in a good mood. "Yeah, well, anyway. Kate didn't really tell me any specifics of your conversation, but she did say that you wondered if I didn't call you from the hospital because you didn't think you were important enough to be called anymore," he prodded, leaving the last part of his sentence unspoken: 'because Kate and I are together now.'

She looked down at her hands. "Well, yeah. I saw you hurt, you obviously needed help and nobody said anything to me. What am I supposed to think? I mean, I think you're going to waltz in with takeout or ice cream or something and but then I get a call from Kate that you were injured."

"She called you?"

"Just from downstairs. So I could be ready, I guess."

"If it's any consolation, I didn't call Kate from the hospital either. She, uh, wasn't too happy about that."

"Yeah, she told me."

"So it was nothing personal. Or rather, I guess it was really personal. I just didn't think it would take very long and I didn't want you ladies to worry. You know...hospitals...and stuff...people always jump to conclusions and think the worst. It really wasn't a big deal."

"CT scan, Dad?" the girl said, raising her eyebrow at him, challenging his claim that it wasn't a big deal. "Narcotics that drug you out of your mind so you can't even walk without falling into lamps? Not a big deal? Seriously?"

"Well, okay, when you put it like that," he said sheepishly, "it does sound like a little bigger deal. So your old man was stupid, and I know now that I should have called you."

"Duh, Dad."

He leaned back into the cushions on the couch. "I never meant to make you feel like you weren't important. I just wanted to save you the worry. I _am_ sorry, sweetie. Will you forgive me?" he asked, trying to put more of a pathetic look on his already pathetic-looking face.

"I'll think about it."

"If I do an appropriate amount of groveling?"

"It'll work in your favor if it involves a credit card or a gift card for that cute little shop that I like."

"I think that can be arranged."

"And you _never_ pull anything like that again," she added, shaking her finger at him in in a scolding manner. He nodded. She didn't say anything for a moment, and then the look on her face changed. "Dad?" she asked.

He took note of the slightly more serious tone of her voice. "What is it, pumpkin?"

"You really didn't call Kate either?"

"No, sweetie, I didn't. She didn't find out until I walked into the Old Haunt last night. I think she was kind of mad at me."

"You think?"

"Well, you know, drugs...memory...weird."

"No, Dad, that was a 'you think' that was like a 'duh'. _Of course_ she was probably mad at you. You're..." she looked up for a second before continuing. "You're engaged now, right? Wow, that sounds weird. But anyway, shouldn't you tell your _fiancee_ when something happens to you?"

The way she said it, he couldn't tell if she was being serious or snarky. "Uhhh..." was all he could manage to get out.

"What's 'uhhh' supposed to mean, anyway?" she asked him with a challenge to her voice. Whoa. Now he could tell his little girl was on a roll. She was going to give it to him.

He took a breath. "It means that since we kind of have the 'why dad didn't call me when he got hurt' topic put to bed, now we need to talk about the 'dad got engaged and I'm feeling weird' topic. And you brought it up, after all, but it kind of surprised me when you did. And I'm just wondering how to start. Hence the 'uhhh'."

She stared at him, but when no response was forthcoming, she just prompted, "Wellllllllllll?"

"Yeah. It was stupid that I didn't call either one of you. And she gave me hell for it already. But to my defense, I didn't know that she was really my fiancee when I got hurt yesterday."

"Huh?"

"I didn't know until earlier this morning that she was wearing the ring."

Alexis thought about it for a minute. "But that doesn't really matter, you know? Because you told me that you gave it to her to let her know how you felt and that you were committed. So it shouldn't matter if you knew if she was wearing it or not. If you, uh, love her and all that, and you're committed to her, then you should act like it regardless of if she's wearing the ring or not. It's about how _you_ feel, not about what _she's_ wearing. You know?"

"Yeah, I'm beginning to see the error of my ways. But what I want to know is, you seemed so unsure of the idea of the whole engagement thing on Sunday, and it wasn't even official then. Then you seemed kind of okay and you made that comment about asking her about...uh...S-E-X..." he kind of cringed as he spelled the word, "But then Kate said your conversation was kind of uncomfortable last night, and I know she showed you the ring, and I know you still weren't jumping for joy then. But now you're almost...uh...kind of sticking up for her-not that I'm complaining or anything. So I don't get it. Has your brain been invaded by aliens, or is this some fickle-teenage-girl-mind-changing thing that you're trying to freak me out with?"

She looked down at her hands, and then she leaned heavily against the back of the couch. "No aliens, Dad. And I'm not trying to freak you out. I just...you were gone for over two weeks and then you were home and you went from giving me cool clothes to being almost-engaged, and then the very next day you were really engaged but you were hurt and all weird. And I didn't know about any of it. Nothing. It was like I was just someone that was supposed to be a really good friend that all of a sudden, you get a Christmas card from, and you find out they moved to Europe or had a sex-change operation or something big and you never had any idea, and then you wonder how good of a friend they really were...know what I mean?"

"I'm sorry, Pumpkin." He reached out an arm and pulled her to him. "You are the most important thing to me. I would _never_ intentionally do anything to hurt you. Or try to get rid of you, or make you feel unwanted, or anything like that. You're the first and best love of my life and you're definitely the best thing I've ever done. I just thought...I guess I was pretty naive. Because I found Kate and she's incredible and amazing too, I love her, and somehow, by some incredible fortune, she loves me too. And you always seemed to like Kate and I just kind of naively thought it wouldn't be a problem; that you'd both just hit it off and everything would be really cool. Well, except for you talking to Kate about...you know what. But now you're kind of...I don't know...acting more comfortable with everything? So I'm really wondering if you're okay with this now, or if I'm reading you wrong, or what's going on."

She sat for a moment and then gave his arm a little squeeze as she pulled back. "I guess...I don't know. I might be getting used to it _a little bit_," she started, emphasizing her last words. "I've always kind of liked Kate, what I knew of her anyway. You know that. I just never had to think of her in terms of being a potential stepmother before. I mean, not, like, instantaneously or anything. But I was talking with Sloan today...do you remember Sloan?"

"The name sounds familiar," he told her as he mentally went through her list of friends.

"She's the one that said she thought you were 'choice' when you were Bachelor #9? Remember?"

Rick thought back and gave an "Oh...", remembering his need for a poker face as his facial muscles protested when he cringed at the memory.

"Anyway, we were talking and I ended up telling her a lot of it and she said..." The girl trailed off and seemed unsure of what to say. For once, Rick didn't interrupt, so then, she took a deep breath, and seemingly forced herself to continue. "Sloan's kind of blunt, if you didn't already gauge that by the comment she made about bachelor #9. She asked me if Kate was like, some total..." she lowered her voice and looked a little embarrassed as she continued, "some total _bitch_ or something, and I told her no, of course not, that she was really pretty cool and nice. And, Dad, well, she already thinks _you're_ hot, which is kind of creepy to me, so she's like, 'what's the big deal, Lex? The new chick isn't Cruella de Vil. She doesn't sound like she's going to try to ship you off to boarding school, and you _know_ your dad wouldn't let her do that anyway. So just go with it and see what happens.' And then she says that the only other options are to try to break you up or something, or go live with mom, and I don't really want to even think of doing either one of those. So I started thinking...you know, like analyzing things. Like trying to look at it all objectively even though it's kind of hard because I'm not really objective because I'm living it and everything. But anyway, I guess...I guess it's not _so_ bad-I mean, it could be worse-as long as Kate was being straight with me last night. And just, you know, don't go out tomorrow and get _married_ or something right away. Let me have some time to get used to it more, okay?"

"Pumpkin..." Rick didn't know what to say. After his talk with Kate, he could see that he'd been expecting too much from his daughter without even realizing it; springing a surprise almost-stepmother on her and expecting her to just go along with it without batting an eyelash. So since then, he'd been worried about how all of this would shake out. But his little girl...oh, she wasn't a little girl, was she? She was acting so mature, and now that he could see, via Kate's help, everything that she'd been trying to assimilate over the last two days, he was just so proud of her for thinking through it rationally and being willing to give him-them-a chance. He didn't know what to say, so he just pulled her to his chest and rested his chin on her head.

"I am so proud of you. And I want to thank you for talking to me about it and being willing to give this a chance. I know now that I was kind of operating inside a bubble of new-romance bliss or something, and I didn't really see the big picture of how this would seem to you. I just thought everything would be great. Happily ever after. So thank you for not going all teenage-psycho on me and rebelling by getting a tattoo and body piercings-"

She pulled back, her eyes big. "Oh, about that...it's not really that big, and it's kind of hidden and everything..." she finished in a fast rush of words, a nervous look on her face.

His jaw dropped open when he heard what she was saying, and his eyes got big like saucers. Or at least the unbruised one did. "You...uh...wha...what's not that big?"

The worried, nervous look transformed into one of mirth. "God, Dad, you are _soooo_ easy!" she laughed. "Gotcha!"

When he realized that he'd walked right into that one and she totally capitalized on his parental insecurities, he glared at her, or attempted to. "You are so getting grounded for that!"

"Yeah, right. Ground me and I won't have anything to do around here. I just may have to pass the time by reconfiguring the parental controls on your computer."

"Hey!"

"Hey yourself!" Then a thought occurred to her again, one from the previous conversation from when they were talking about Kate and the ring. "But we kind of got off the topic of the ring, dad. And I have a few more things that I want to know."

He couldn't think of what she could possibly be getting at, but he was willing to answer anything if it made her more comfortable with these new changes. "Okay, what?"

"Okay, so you give her this ring and she doesn't have to wear it right away, not until she's ready, right?" He nodded. "So say you're committed, because you gave her the ring and everything, but then you don't tell her about something important like you getting hurt."

"I wasn't _that_ hurt," he protested.

"You went to the hospital. You had _brain_ tests. Come on, dad. Anytime you go to the hospital for something, that's kind of a deal-breaker. You go to a hospital, it's important. If it's important, you call people. _Especially _people that you're supposed to be close to. So I have to wonder-how committed can you be if you didn't even call the person that you _proposed_ to? I mean, you were always so gun-shy about another marriage. But then you go ahead and propose to Kate. But if you don't even think enough of her to tell her when you're hurt, then how serious are you? Really? You know, I don't want you to strike out again. If you're going to do this, then you really have to _try_, you have to be a full participant, and not just take the easy way out. So there's my question: are you _really_ in this? Because if you are, then that's...okay, I guess. But if you're not, then you should just be honest with her, and tell her that you're not ready to be in a committed relationship like that. I mean, I know your record, dad. It would be more fair to her if you just came clean. Now, before anything more happened. Because..." She took a breath, and he noticed that her eyes were a little shinier than what they had been. When she continued speaking, her voice was low, but controlled with an intensity that he rarely heard from his daughter. "Because _I_ don't want to have to witness another breakup and divorce and everything that goes along with it. You're not the only one that's affected when your marriage breaks up."

His jaw dropped, and he was so stunned that he couldn't think to formulate any more words for a few long moments. "Sweetie...God, I never want to go through another divorce. I never want _you_ to have to witness that again. But I don't understand..." Why would she think that he was going to bail? And then she continued, as if she could read his mind.

"Actions, dad. And your actions, when you didn't tell either of us about getting hurt, don't really scream 'committed'. And I hate to have to say it, but Kate deserves better than that. I do too. I don't want to get used to this whole engagement thing and then have you break up."

Rick stared at his daughter. She...she was saying...she thought that he wasn't committed? "No, pumpkin! I am committed. I want to marry Kate. I would marry her if she came to me tomorrow and told me she wanted to fly to Vegas. I...this time is different. I know it. I just...I was stupid about not telling you about the fight in the restaurant. I know that now." He thought back to the previous afternoon, and how the whole thing had happened. "Those publishers meetings that I have to go to...they're so boring. I mean, at first they were fun a long time ago, when I was getting used to the fame thing. But lately, they're just tedious. There's always some girl there who..." he trailed off, and remembering he was talking to his daughter, altered how he described the situation. "There's always some girl there who seems like she's...assigned to...flirt with me or something. You know, hang on my every word. Give me attention and stroke my ego."

"Seriously?" Alexis' eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Seriously."

"But isn't that like...like...oh, God, I don't even want to know," she said, closing her eyes. She had a quick mind, and she'd inherited his imagination, and despite him trying to dumb it down, she could fill in the blanks. Or most of them. He certainly hoped she couldn't fill them all in.

"That's probably wise. Anyway, yesterday there was an annoying...woman," he wanted to say 'girl', because that's what she had seemed to him, but he couldn't say that to his daughter. A daughter who seemed to be more mature than LYDIA did. "And she kept flirting with me, and she was so annoying. And after almost no time at all, I realized that I just wanted out of there. She was SO annoying!" he repeated, for emphasis. "I realized that more than anything, I wanted to be with Kate, helping her with cases, being around her, looking forward to coming home with her and decompressing. And seeing you when you were done with school, and maybe we could all make sundaes or something and just hang out." He gave her a little smile. "So I was trying to think of some way to ditch them, but then some guy punched me out, and at first, when I woke up, I thought I was back in Florida with Kate. But then I realized that the other woman was really the one who was hovering over me and was acting all concerned. And God, it scared me...I didn't want _her_! But then they wanted to take me to the hospital, and I didn't want you to hear that from Paula, because I know how she can be. You did _not _need Paula telling you in her businesslike manner that I was in the hospital and freaking you out. I honestly thought it would be really quick. And I somehow knew she didn't know about my new relationship with Kate, but I thought she might get it in her mind to call her anyway because of me shadowing her, so I told her not to call Kate either. I just didn't want either of you to worry, pumpkin, because I didn't think it was all that serious at the time. I know I look like hell now, but it just didn't seem so bad then. Honestly, I just thought it was kind of cool because it got me away from that annoying publishing woman who kept hovering over me. It was a _relief_ to get away from her."

"Come on, Dad, she couldn't have been that bad."

"Alexis, she wouldn't even let me eat my lunch because she kept yammering at me, and she told me several times how she thought I should start referring to Nikki as Nicole to add some more depth to the character, or something like that."

"Seriously?" Alexis asked again, with a 'give-me-a-break' look on her face.

"Unfortunately, yes. But anyway, it wasn't anything conscious about wanting to keep something from you, either of you, or not thinking you were important enough. I just...they were hauling me away on a stretcher and I couldn't explain everything to Paula right then, so I just told her not to call anyone."

He looked at Alexis expectantly, but she didn't say anything. He knew he was going to have to be the one to speak next, and what he said would be important-very important-in reassuring her of his intentions. "Alexis, I've already told you how important you are to me. And nothing will ever change that. But Kate is going to become part of that dynamic now. She's going to become part of our family. And if you're worried that I'm not in it for the long haul, then stop. Stop right there. Because I am. And I know she is. You should have seen her when I gave her that ring. I totally freaked her out."

"I know...she told me. Well, she said she had a panic attack when she realized that she loved you," she said with a ghost of a smile.

"Yeah," he said, remembering. "She did. But when I gave her the ring, I freaked her out again. But the funny thing was, and is, that I'm _not_ freaked out. At all. And that's what clinches it for me...you know? The thought of getting married again, to Kate...I know it's right. We'll make it work. I know that, somehow. I just...I love her," he said simply. "More than anything, except for you. And you know? She put the ring on. I don't know why yet, but I thought it would take months. I _never_ thought she would have put it on already. So that's big, and it's wonderful. And you know she means it. So you don't have to worry. You will _never_ have to witness the destruction of a marriage again. Not mine, anyway."

Alexis looked at her dad, battered and beaten up, and looking like the happiest man in the world when he talked about the Detective that he'd been following for all of these years. She could see the sincerity, the determination in his eyes. Not able to do anything else, she leaned forward and hugged him.

He'd been stupid.

She realized that now. But it didn't mean that he loved her any less, or that he didn't love the Detective. He was just stupid. And judging by the shock on his face when she told him to reconsider if he wasn't committed, she would say that he _was_ committed

"Okay, dad."

"Okay...what?"

"Okay...go and get married. But don't you _dare_ mess it up or you will have to answer to me! And then I really _will_ get a tattoo! And maybe a body piercing too," she added, strictly with the intent of shocking him. And judging by the look on his face, she had indeed shocked him. In more than one way. And he couldn't decide if he wanted to grin in happiness about her approval for getting married or cringe in horror at the thought of his little girl getting tattooed or pierced.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate knocked on the door to the loft at a little after seven o'clock that evening. She'd texted Castle earlier, but had only received a reply of 'Come on over'. So she went, not entirely sure of what she'd find, or the emotional climate that she'd find, especially since the girl had most likely talked to her father by now. But she was surprised to have the door opened by a very pleasant and polite Alexis, who greeted her warmly, if not formally, and ushered her into the living room to sit down. While walking toward the couch, Kate experienced a new feeling of nervousness as she wondered what awaited her. With her job and her being on the spot with suspects frequently, she didn't typically experience bouts of nervousness, so this was a new and unwelcome feeling for her.

And she was even more unprepared when that girl, the one who'd exhibited a rollercoaster of emotions directly to her within the last couple of days, first the high on the phone and then the low of the in-person conversation, sat down next to her on the couch and said, "I know I wasn't really very nice and welcoming last night, so I want to apologize for that."

Kate dumbly gave a not to her head, accompanied by a little smile. She didn't know what to make of this yet, nor did she know how to respond. And the nerves that she'd been feeling for the last few minutes showed no signs of dissipating.

"Don't worry, you don't have to try to figure out a way to say 'that's okay'. Because it's really not that okay and I really am sorry about it."

"Alexis, I told you last night...I get it, okay?" Inside her head, Kate told herself to just go with her gut when talking to the girl, as she'd done last night. "You've had a lot to adjust to, and most of it with no warning. So I don't fault you for being a little...teenagerish. You know, moody, upset, put out...whatever."

Alexis looked down into her hands. "God, that's so cliche. I try not to be like that."

"Yeah, and it's cliche for scatterbrained women to giggle. I don't consider myself scatterbrained, but I do admit to a giggle every now and then. It happens," Kate finished, trying to put the girl a little bit at ease. Already, she could tell that Alexis was in a better mental state than the last time she'd seen her, so she was encouraged. And that made the nerves start to calm down a little bit.

Alexis took a breath. "Dad's resting. Again. But he's probably about ready to get up. I ordered some chinese and it should be here soon. But before we eat..." Alexis took a breath. "I know things were kind of...uncomfortable last night when we talked. But you were right-I was kind of blindsided. But I did a lot of thinking today, and I talked with a friend of mine, and I talked with my dad this afternoon. And I wanted you to know that I'm feeling a little bit, uh, better about things. More normal, not like I'm feeling like I walked into this alternate reality. So I like your idea from last night about just hanging out and seeing how things go for a while. Maybe going dress shopping. That sounds like a good plan."

At hearing the girl's words, Kate felt relief wash through her veins as the nervousness went away, and she felt a smile bloom on her face. And seeing Kate's smile made one appear on Alexis' face too. The two females sat there grinning at each other for a couple of moments, before Kate stuck out her hand. She still felt like a hug would be trying to inflict too much familiarity on the girl too soon, but a handshake was good. Alexis took the hand that was offered, and Kate gave it a light shake. "It's a deal. And promise me, Alexis, that if you're ever feeling uncertain or unhappy about something, please tell me? I want to work to make this right between all of us."

The girl nodded. "I'll try. But will you promise me something? Before you move in, will you give me a little warning first?" Her candid question caused the smile on Kate's face to falter with the shock of the statement and how she'd implied it was a done deal, and furthermore that it was going to happen soon. "I know you're staying over and stuff, and I get that. But when the big move happens, and you have to file the change of address with the post office, give me a heads-up, 'kay?"

"Definitely. I can do that. But Alexis, we're not to that point yet. Not anywhere close."

"Yeah, but you're, um, engaged. Wow, that sounds weird. But unless I miss my guess, my dad is probably going to want that address change to happen pretty quickly."

"I'm sure you're right. But it still is at least a little ways off. So you'll have warning, don't worry about that."

"You'd better prepare yourself for hurricane Rick then, because he told me he'd take you to Vegas tomorrow to make it official if you'd go along with it."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm sure he did," she said dryly.

"So if he's willing to do that, I don't see him backing down on something like moving in-something that he probably thinks is really little."

"Yeah, well, he can go on thinking that. That doofus is still on my bad boy list for not calling me when he got hurt."

"We...um...talked about that," Alexis admitted, suddenly sounding a little bit uncomfortable.

"Oh?" Kate didn't know what else to say right then, while she tried to gauge exactly what Alexis meant.

"Yeah, um, I won't go into specifics, but I told him that was a really bad move, not just to not call me, but to not call you too. Is that too many negatives? Well, whatever. Anyway, he explained some things-and just between you and me, let me just say that I think you _really_ need to tag along to the next lunch he has with his publisher. But I get his thinking a little more now, even though I still think what he did was stupid. When he didn't call anyone. I mean, _knocked out_? Come on. He said he'd make it up to me-us-though."

Kate thought for a minute, considering her next words. The girl's demeanor seemed more upbeat tonight, so she thought, 'why not?' "Believe me, Alexis, I'm already plotting ways to teach him a lesson for that little stunt. He acts put out if I don't tell him I have a stiff neck or I have a headache, and he says he wants to take care of me and everything, but then he gets carted off to the hospital and doesn't tell me? So not good."

Alexis nodded in agreement. "I already told him that a gift card for that little boutique down the street will work nicely."

"I'm sure it will, but an idea is forming in my head, and I have something a little more crafty and, shall we say, more...dramatic in mind. Something that will make more of an impression on him than him just throwing money around."

Alexis, when her eyebrows raised and the smile dropped off her face, looked shocked by Kate's words, and Kate wondered if she'd gone too far, too soon. She'd wanted to build a rapport with the girl, not make her wary or alienate her by making her think that she was going to try to take advantage of her father or hurt him in some way. But Kate was unprepared for Alexis' next words, delivered after a slight smile made the corners of her mouth turn upwards as her eyes narrowed.

"Well, count me in."

Kate gave a shake to her head and narrowed her eyes. "I'm sorry...what?"

"I'm sure that whatever you have in mind is way better than a gift card. And it will teach him a lesson, right?" Kate nodded hesitantly. "So um...yeah...well..." The girl looked suddenly a bit uncomfortable, but she still continued. "We're supposed to, like, bond or something, right? I mean, since you're going to be around here a lot more? So, uh, he really dissed both of us by not calling us, right? I love my dad, but sometimes he needs to learn lessons the hard way. And whatever you have planned will make more of an impression if I'm in on it too, right? So we could work together to plot something against him that he'll never forget. Tell him later that it's a bonding experience for us. Oh, but if you don't want..." she trailed off, suddenly wondering if she was foisting herself into Kate's plans a little too forcefully.

Kate smiled. "No, Alexis. I'm just surprised. After I said it, I didn't want you to think that I was going to do something mean or hurtful to him. I wouldn't do that...well, not too much anyway," she finished with a smile. "You want in, then you're in. I'm sure we can figure out something that your dad will never forget."

"Good," Alexis answered, and then fell silent. That conversation was done, for now, and it had actually gone pretty well. Now they just had to muddle through getting to know each other. Not knowing what else to say just then, Alexis leaned forward and swung her feet to the floor, moving like she was going to get up from the couch. "The food should be here soon, and I'll go get some plates and stuff ready. Uh, do you want to go see if you can wake up my dad?"

Before Alexis could get up from the couch, Kate stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Alexis...thank you. Thank you for being willing to give this a chance when I know you must have really been shocked by everything. You have my word...I'll try my best to make this work. And I want to do what I can to make the transition easy on you. Please, like I said before, just know that you can talk to me if you want, if you're feeling weird about something. I know I'm not your mother, but I hope that if nothing else, at least we can be kind of friends. And Lord knows, we may need to be each others backups in taking care of your dad and keeping him out of trouble."

Alexis smiled back at the detective. "I know we're not going to be BFFs all the time, and that I'll probably annoy you and you'll annoy me sometimes. But I guess that's okay. Dad annoys me too. Just...uh, try not to turn into stereotypical, mean, wicked stepmother type of person, okay?" At the word 'stepmother', Alexis noticed Kate's sudden intake of breath. She knowingly let out a little chuckle. "Yeah, it feels as weird saying it as I imagine it does hearing it."

"Yeah, it does," Kate admitted. "Turning into _that_ is the last thing I want to do."

Alexis gave her a little nod in acknowledgment, finished getting up and went into the kitchen. Kate watched her disappear and then got to her feet before she headed into the bedroom to roust Rick from his nap. As she walked, she exhaled slowly and felt some of the tension that she didn't even acknowledge that she had leave her as the air left her lungs. Things were looking up, so much better than they'd been just the night before. Once again, she hoped the trend continued.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

During dinner, which they all ate while sitting around the counter in the kitchen, Kate regaled Alexis with tales of her dad on pain meds. Of course, she wasn't present for a lot of the more embarrassing things, and there was no way she was going to tell Alexis anything with any sexual overtones, like the 'little blue pill' or the plane comments, but she had plenty of material nonetheless. Alexis was appropriately shocked, and expressed the wish that she wished she could have been there. Rick thought his daughter was being sweet...she wanted to be there for him. Aww... But then she burst Rick's parental pride bubble when she remarked that it would have made a really nice blackmail topic to lord over her dad in the future. Amidst his sputtering, Kate showed her Esposito's video and the teenager burst out laughing at his 'girly breasts' comment.

Since Rick hadn't heard it yet and couldn't remember the vast majority of what had happened, Kate also filled him in on the final chapter in the punking plan. She realized that his impromptu trip to the hospital was actually one of the reasons that the episode at the bar got as convoluted as it did; if Castle had never called Esposito and Lanie to come to the hospital, then Kate would have been able to finally corner Lanie and tell her the truth. But she never got a chance to do that because Lanie had already left by the time she got to the morgue. "I just can't believe that when you did finally come clean, they didn't believe you anyway," Rick told them, shaking his head. "I mean, how much more do they need it spelled out for them. I _kissed_ you! That much I remember!"

"I know, right?" Kate agreed. "And that was even with you practically crooning 'we're getting marrieeeeeddd!'" She shook her head at the memory.

"I just wish I could remember more about...what happened." He didn't say it, but Kate had a sense that he was talking about when he saw that she was wearing the ring. But she was aware of the fact that Alexis was still with them and she didn't want to make the girl uncomfortable again by talking about the engagement too much. So she tried to deflect the conversation back to humorous territory.

"Yeah, maybe if you remembered more, you could remember the guy that you you freaked out in the men's room when you were doing your Katy Perry zipper serenade so you could apologize if you ever see him again."

"Don't remind me," he said, cringing, but then adding an "Ow" when he remembered that cringing hurt his face.

"Poker face, Castle," Kate reminded.

"Yeah, right." He straightened out his face and concentrated on eating another wonton.

Alexis was obviously thinking about something. After she swallowed, she said "You know, dad, if you ever have writer's block, you should just take one of those pills and then try to write something. With you imagining all of this crazy stuff, you could probably make a killing with different editions of 'Musings of the High Castle'. Get it? Like High Court, all superior sounding, only High Castle? Because you're high from the pills?"

Kate thought about it, and then she deadpanned, "Yeah, and then your author picture on the back of the dustjacket could be you mooning everyone, with a big X over your tushie."

"My tushie?" Castle asked, but she ignored him.

"But, Alexis, the one drawback is that the pills would be addicting,so he'd probably be addicted by the time he actually got enough material for even one book. And that would mean that you would be subjected to hallucinations of spiked fruit cups and man-boobs on a regular basis."

"Me? What about you?" the girl asked Kate in a high voice as the images of that scenario formed in her brain. "You'd have to deal with him too. You're going to be around more."

"Nah," Kate continued to deadpan, speaking directly to Alexis, across Rick, as if he wasn't even there. "I think I might be working _very_ long hours at the precinct. You wouldn't see me for days at a time."

"Well, forget that idea then. I am _not_ going to be his nanny. It's hard enough keeping him away from the whipped cream before dinner. So it doesn't turn into his dinner."

"Should I just go into the other room while you two discuss my custody arrangements?" Rick said, a pouty tone to his voice.

"Buck up, Castle. This is only the beginning. Like I told you earlier, everyone will be telling stories about last night and referring to it for a long time. A _long_ time. So get used to it." She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "But don't worry. We love you anyway, even though you were like a very vocal verbal puppy on crack last night." Out of the corner of her eye, Kate watched Alexis eyeing her as she gave Castle the kiss, but then she smiled at the analogy to the verbal puppy. "Now why don't you go into the living room. We won't discuss your custody, but I'll put the leftovers away and then we can relax on the couch for a bit. Maybe we can fill Alexis in on some of our adventures in Florida? Like when you did the chicken dance on the beach?" she prompted, hoping he would get the hint about only mentioning the G-rated adventures.

"Okay," he conceded, "but you'd better not plot against me. Or you," he said, pointing to his daughter, "are going to find that scooter listed on Craigslist."

Her eyes briefly widened at the threat, but she recovered remarkably quickly and issued a volley of her own. "Cool, Dad! My friend Miranda got a new Harley for her birthday, and she's been dying to give me a ride! If you sell the scooter, I'll have a good reason to take her up on her offer!" And she flounced happily toward the refrigerator, while Castle looked momentarily shell-shocked, but then slinked away to the living room, his parental bribery and guilt foiled again by the cunning daughter that knew him so well. When he was gone, Kate borrowed one of Castle's lines as she whispered, "That was awesome," to Alexis while she softly high fived her so Rick couldn't hear the slap.

And despite the apprehension that she'd felt over the last couple of days since she found out about the seriousness of her dad's and Kate's new relationship, Alexis began to think, for the first time, that having Kate around on a regular basis might not be so terribly bad after all.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

A short time later, Rick and Kate sat on the couch while Alexis was in her room finishing a bit of homework she wanted to do before the evening got any later. They were turned toward each other. She looked at him, and he looked at her. Moments passed. Finally, she reached up and ever so lightly, touched the side of his face by his eye, tracing the swollen bruise with her fingertips. Her hand lowered to cup his cheek as she said, "Tell me, how does it _really_ feel?"

"Could be worse. I'll survive. But I'm sure I'll need some TLC while I heal," he quipped.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Yeah, yeah. And don't worry. You'll get some. I think Alexis wants to cook you a special breakfast tomorrow morning," she fibbed, deliberately misunderstanding his intention for TLC.

He smiled a wry smile. "While that sounds wonderful, I think I'll need some TLC from _both_ of my girls," he told her.

She raised her eyebrow at him for the 'girl' comment, but only said "I'll see what I can do."

They were silent once more, just looking at each other, when Rick reached out with his right hand, picking up her left gently and running his thumb over the ring. She smiled at him, as she was touched by how in awe he still seemed by the fact that she was wearing it.

"So you never told me," he started. "Why did you decide to put the ring on? Not that I'm complaining, but I just never thought I'd see it on you anywhere near this soon. I was even trying to steel myself for the fact that you might not even be wearing it by Christmas."

She gave him a little smile, and then she took a breath as her face clouded over a little. "There was a case yesterday," she began, and she slowly related the major points of Jonathan Hill's murder, and of her interview with Rachel Cassidy. "So I got home, and I saw the ring sitting there. And I thought back to what Rachel said, and her regrets. I realized that I didn't want to have the same regrets. And then it hit me all of a sudden like a ton of bricks that wearing the ring didn't mean we were immediately married. It just meant that I was _going_ to marry you, someday. That I want to and intend to. It meant I was committed to you, that I'm not looking around anymore. You made a committment by giving it to me, and I'm returning the committment by wearing it. Someday, when we're both ready for that last step, we'll take it. But for now, we have this," she finished, holding up their joined hands.

He brought their joined hands toward him and he gave her fingers a kiss. At the mention of the committment, he thought back to what Alexis had said, about him being committed or not. He didn't want to bring up Alexis' concerns right now with her, but he felt like he needed to address it somehow, if only for his own peace of mind. "You know, I do want to marry you."

"Yeah, I kind of figured that out when you gave me the ring," she said in a 'no duh' sort of tone.

"No," he said, kissing her hand once again. "I want you to know that I want to marry you, and I want to _be_ married to you, and I want to _stay_ married to you. Whatever that means. I just want you. Any way I can get you. Always."

He said the words with utter and complete seriousness. and those words had her eyes tearing up. She couldn't help what her eyes were doing, but she was angry with them just the same. She was used to being able to control her emotions and reactions, but his simple words got past her defenses.

"I know," she said simply, and those words elicited a smile on his face. A beaming smile. Before she could say anything else, he reached forward and drew her to him. It wasn't even for a kiss; he just wanted to hold her. He drew her into an embrace and she floated there willingly. All at once, he felt that everything was right with the world.

"Castle?" she asked a few minutes later, breaking the silence in the room.

"Mmm hmm?" he responded, still content to just hold her close and do nothing but sit there.

"I...um...my life seems to have taken a turn down a dramatically different path recently. So different from what I'd ever imagined. And it was all because you came very close to committing a felony when you kidnapped me. And I just can't help but think that if I could go back and do it all over again..." she pulled back then, mostly out of his embrace. She looked at him, gazing into the blue eyes she'd come to love. And a smile lit her face before she continued.

"I wouldn't change a thing."

* * *

***** THE END *****

_**There it is folks, the end of 'The Plan'. After 298 days and over 325,000 words, it's done. Like I said in the beginning, I had a lot to cover so this got very long, but I hope it was a fitting ending for such a monster of a story. I had a couple of other endings in mind, but I liked where I left this, and the contrast between the last line and the first chapter, where he said his plan was going to be awesome if she didn't end up killing him first. Well, she didn't kill him, and it did turn out to be awesome.**_

_**Now, I do have some little Post-Plan snippets floating around in my brain, so at some point, I'm going to write a little epilogue chapter to get those out of my brain and on paper. Maybe some precinct stuff, and definitely the revenge. So I'm going to leave this story as incomplete for now, until that chapter is done. **_

_**I've been rereading Blizzard, and that story is my next stop. I'm actually kind of psyched to get back to writing that one. So those of you who are following it, you can look forward to an update on that, hopefully soon.**_

_**For everyone that read and reviewed this story, thank you. Really, sincerely, thank you. I've appreciated reading all of the reviews and, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much to everyone who took the time to leave me one review, or multiples. This story has been a real journey for me. I have parts of it that I love, and parts that I think are just okay. I've improved my vocabulary. I've gotten better at descriptive writing. And I learned that I can write smut. And apparently, I can write smut that people actually enjoy reading, which is kind of cool (unless you're a kid, and then please, let me rest comfortably in my oblivion of not knowing that. In that case, ignorance IS bliss for me). So, writing this story has been a wonderful experience for me, and without all of you who kept reading it, I wouldn't have gone on this long or found out all of these new things. So, once again, thank you.**_

_**So since I'm done, if anyone has any ideas for something that would make a cool story, let me know. I have to finish Blizzard, of course, and then I have an idea in my head for a short little fic (no, really!) based on the S4 opener.**_

_**As I was writing this chapter, I just have to put this in because it's so...funny (at least to me). I have a 9 year old. He LOVES Castle. Granted, a lot of the innuendo goes over his head (I'm happy about that, actually). He randomly quotes lines from the show. He can tell you the order of the shows in Seasons 1 and 2 and he knows the episodes by name. And he is a HUGE Caskett 'shipper. We were re-watching (for the umpteenth time) the 'Nikki Heat' episode, and during the part where Castle 'proposes' to Beckett-with Ryan's ring-he applauded them. He watches Castle on the DVD player in the car. When I told him about the spoilers for a new love interest for Castle in Season 4 (the artsy person), he booed and looked distraught. He talks about 'Caskett'. He has to be the biggest 9 year old shipper out there. His birthday is coming up, and I ordered him a sweatshirt that says "I want to be Castle when I grow up". I think it'll be well received. ;-) Seriously, I think this kid would wet himself if he ever got to see anything about Castle in person. Of course, he doesn't know about my fanfiction, but it's nice to have a fellow Castle addict in the house with me (although this kid waaayyyy surpasses me).**_


	78. Epilogue  1

_**This is a series of scenes from the days right after chapter 77 ended. It was a little over a year ago that I published the first chapter of this story (can you believe it?), so I wanted to put this out there as sort of a little anniversary present (although belated) for all of you who have stuck with the story. **_

_**I'm planning a few epilogues with different types of ideas, and this is only the first. on I don't know exactly when they'll all be published, but I'm working on the second one right now, and they all will be published eventually.**_

_**These epilogues are my way of tying up some of the loose ends and giving a bit more resolution to some of the parts of the story that people have asked me about, or things that I thought needed more of a resolution or still had some unanswered questions floating around.**_

_**And, yes I do think it's kind of cheesy of me to have multiple epilogues for one story, but the alternative was to have a separate sequel fic, and with everything that happened in the previous 77 chapters, I didn't really know if a sequel (as a separate story) would even make sense to people. And also, I could see people missing it if it was a different fic, whereas putting the extra chapters at the end of this story makes sure that people who already have story alerted it will know about these chapters. So I hope that makes sense.**_

_**Disclaimer: No, the wonderful characters aren't mine. AWM and his crew do a much better job with them than I can anyway.**_

* * *

After a full two minutes of her standing in front of Lanie's desk on Wednesday morning, the ME finally acknowledged that her friend, the Detective, was standing in front of her.

"Are you ever going to say something or are you just going to stand there and block my light all morning?"

"I was waiting for you to look up. I didn't want to bother you. Come on, Lanie," Kate told her gently, but letting her know that she knew what Lanie was doing.

"Yeah, I know all about you not wanting to bother me. You and Castle get together and you don't want to bother me. You get _engaged_ and you don't want to bother me."

"Okay, fine, I'll bother you." She plopped down in a chair. "You're still annoyed."

"You bet I'm annoyed, girl! All of that Dave crap and it was you and Castle all along? And then, you not even tellin' me when I saw that ring when we were unpacking. That was cruel, girl. How long have I been tellin' you that Castle was the guy for you? I'm your friend, and I've been rootin' for you two since day one, and you don't tell me? Yup, cruel."

"Lanie, were you listening to nothing last night? I already told you that I _was_ talking about Castle when I told you everything. I even thought you _knew_ it was Castle. I thought you knew it as soon as you opened the ring box. In my mind, the jig was up. I had no idea that you thought the ring was from Dave until you were leaving, and then you were out of there so fast that I thought I was going to hear a sonic boom or something. I even tried to call you back but I guess you didn't hear me."

Lanie said nothing; she just sat there and stared at her friend.

But Kate _was_ an experienced interrogator, if nothing else, and she still had those skills. So she used them to point out Lanie's faults in this misunderstanding, to take the heat off of herself for a bit, because in all honesty, part of the problem _did_ result from Lanie avoiding her. "And you know I left you a message to call me back, which you never did, and I also saw you in the elevator on Monday and you just turned around and bolted. Now how is _that_ for treating a friend?"

"But what about the pictures, and those texts? The hot tub? It was ice water time for me, girl. And then I find out that it was all just fake. No more real than the boobs on the playboy bunny over there on table three."

"Well, uh...it wasn't really...all fake, Lanie," Kate admitted sheepishly, but with a small smile as she raised her eyebrows and lightly bit her bottom lip.

But Lanie mistook what she meant, and her eyes got big. "Oh, my God! After all of that, you mean there really IS something with Dave? I don't know how-"

Now it was Kate's turn for her eyes to get big. "Dave? God, no, Lanie! Will you forget about Dave? It was Castle."

"Castle?"

"Yeah, Castle. In the hot tub. With me."

"Castle?" she repeated. "In the hot tub? For real?"

"Oh, yeah. Castle, in the hot tub. It was really for real," she told her friend in a relaxed voice that indicated just how good the memory was. "And in the ocean, and the pool, and on the stairs..."

"The stairs?" Lanie asked. "How...no, I don't think I want to know."

Kate giggled, which caused Lanie to do a double-take. "Girl, did you just _giggle_? Kate Beckett, super cop, just giggled like a schoolgirl?"

Kate smiled at her. "Maybe I did. You got a problem with that?"

Lanie looked at her, and past her own bitchiness that resulted from being punked, she saw the happiness in her friend that she'd seen on Sunday night after she'd found the ring. Castle's ring. It was a long time in coming...this level of happiness. And faced with it, and knowing the real cause of it-something that she'd been hoping would happen for years-she just couldn't be mad anymore. "No, honey, I don't have a problem. Giggle away. But you better start dishing."

"What? Lanie, I know we share, but really, you know about the hot tub and the ocean-"

"No, not that. Although, I wouldn't mind a few more of those details too. Gotta live vicariously, you know. But I wanna know how you two _finally_ opened your eyes to each other. How long did it take? Was it the first night, and you stared longingly at each other on the moonlit beach and then got down and dirty in the sand? Or did he just finally jump you or something...all neanderthal-like? No, wait...you woke up and jumped him! That's it, right? Finally using all of that repressed sexual energy?"

Kate rolled her eyes at Lanie's need for details, and her ability to conjure up some of her own. "No! None of that. It took us about a week to admit-"

"A WEEK? An entire week? You wasted a week of being with that man alone in a beachfront mansion in paradise?"

"Lanie, will you settle down? I'm worried about your blood pressure. Yes, it took us about a week to admit everything, that..."

"-that you were madly in love?" Lanie finished for her.

"Well, yeah. See, first, I realized that my feelings for him were changing. Or I was finally recognizing them, or something. But then just as that was happening, he couldn't seem to wait to keep his distance. It was like I was repulsive or something."

Lanie, of course listening very intently, was confused by her last statement. "You? Repulsive? To him? No way."

"Well, yeah, it seemed like it. Because his feelings for me were changing too, but neither of us actually voiced anything. And he didn't want to push me in case I didn't want that, so he tried to hold back because he didn't want to lose our friendship."

"He wanted you but he didn't act on it. In a beachfront paradise. Man, I never thought of Castle as a saint, but the man must be."

"No, he's no saint, and he's no match for me." There was a particular gleam in her eye when she smiled then, and Lanie smiled a knowing smile back at her as she read between the lines.

"Oh, my goodness. You seduced him? You? With Castle?"

"Well, eventually. But basically, in a nutshell, we figured out we had a mutual attraction, we did a pseudo-dating thing for a few days, then I figured out that I loved him and I freaked out and ran away-"

"WHAT?"

"Yeah. Seems kind of funny and stupid now, but it wasn't then. But I got my head on straight, and I told him-"

"WHAT?"

"Yeah, I told him first, and then he told me, and then...well, that was the ocean."

She watched as Lanie's jaw dropped, and for once, her friend appeared to be speechless. "So you...and he...and then..." Kate nodded throughout all of her stammering speech, and Lanie just slumped back in her chair and said "Damn."

"And the rest is history."

When she recovered, Lanie asked, "But what about Dave? Where did you get him from?"

Kate rolled her eyes again at Lanie's wording; like she picked Dave up from the shelf at the corner grocery store. "We met them at the ice cream place. We'd already decided to try to punk you at that point, just to shift the focus off of me and Castle, to give us some time to just be together without people cracking jokes about us and trying to call to find out the details and everything. People are just so _nosy_!" she finished. When she said that last part, Lanie did a good job of looking offended. "So we went for drinks and ended up telling them about it, and Dave offered to pose as my man. And we got along with them really well, and we did a few other things with them. They're a couple of really nice people. Joelle is fun but she doesn't take any crap from anyone...you'd like her. And Dave...Dave is goofy like Castle, but he's really down-to-earth and laid back at the same time. He even recognized Rick and didn't make a big fuss. And he and Rick get along really well. That part of it was totally the truth. So we hung out with them a few more times. It was fun."

"So the proposal? From Castle? What about that?"

"Lanie, it was exactly like I told you on Sunday night. I told you the unvarnished truth about that. I just never said Rick's name because I thought you were talking about him already. It just never occurred to me. But everything I said was the truth."

Lanie sat in silence for a while. It was probably only a couple of minutes, but it seemed like longer. Finally, she just shook her head from side to side. "I still don't know if I should whomp you with something for trying to fool me like you did. But then I think how you and Castle are together now, and you're gettin' married! I still can't believe that one. But I'm so happy for you. I really am, honey." And she got up and walked around her desk to give Kate a hug. "You both deserve it. You're perfect for each other, and I'm just so happy that you woke up and did something about that attraction that you've had for_ever_."

"You know, Lanie, me too. I never thought that things would turn out this way when I decided to let him take me on the trip. But I'm so glad I took the chance. So...oh! The letter! You wrote that letter, the one I read on the plane! And you packed...thanks, Lanie."

"You don't have to thank me, sweetie. Just seeing you like this and knowing I had some small art in it is thanks enough. But let me tell you...when you set a date with that man, I want to know _right away_!"

Kate laughed. "Deal." Then, looking at her father's watch, she noticed the time. "Wow, I really should get back upstairs. Hey, do you want me to send Esposito back down here? So you can have your wicked way with him in the supply closet or something? You know, release some of that ice-water buildup that you got from listening to me talk about Castle."

"Kate Beckett! Castle certainly has had an effect on you, hasn't he? But no, thank you. That supply closet is too narrow for a man of Javier's...talents...anyway," Lanie deadpanned.

"Lanie!" And for the first time, Kate was speechless.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"What's that?" Castle asked as he walked into the bullpen. He bobbed his head sideways toward an enormous basket of fruit.

It was now three days after the accident in the restaurant, and he was feeling well enough to finally return to the precinct. He was going stir-crazy at home anyway, and he was very close to driving Kate and the guys insane with constant calls and text messages, wanting to be in on the action, even though there actually wasn't all that much action to be in on. So she finally told him he could come in today for a few hours, provided that he didn't go out into the field and that he promised to be on his best behavior.

So he walked in at about 10:30 in the morning, having slept in longer than Kate because he was still sleeping more than normal because of his injuries. He came with the usual two cups of coffee, setting them down on Kate's desk as he eyed the basket of fruit that was sitting on the corner of Ryan's desk.

"Castle! Hey!" Ryan greeted him. "You're looking better than the last time I saw you. I bet Beckett has been taking really _goooood_ care of you, huh?" he asked with a raised eyebrow and a certain tone to his voice, indicating that there was a lot more to the question than the words themselves indicated. And of course, since everyone by now had seen the ring that Beckett was sporting and had heard that the decective and her writer shadow were now officially 'together', the second meaning of his question wasn't missed by anyone within earshot, and several people turned around to hear what Castle's response would be, and more importantly, if they should run for cover if Beckett went on the warpath if anything got too personal.

Kate had been wondering when the jokes and the ribbing would be starting, now that he was officially back in the precinct for the first time since they got together. She'd already briefed her new fiance on PDAs in the precinct, and her briefing basically amounted to telling him 'keep your hands to yourself and don't even _think_ about it.' Her stern mandate had earned her a Castle-style pouty face, but she just told him to knock it off, and if he didn't like it, he could stay home. "Look at it this way," she told him, "that part of things-our interactions at the precinct, that is-won't be any different than we're used to." Then she leaned into him closely and bit her bottom lip as she ran a fingertip down his neck to his collarbone. In a low, sultry voice she added, "It's just _after hours_...then you can have all of the PDAs you want, okay? But then they'll be more...private displays of affection, I guess. Very private," she finished as she lightly kissed his jawline. "Because we both know that the after-hours part of things isn't _anything_ like it used to be. Right?"

Shocked by her abrupt change in demeanor from no-nonsense detective to alluring vixen, he could only stare at her dumbly while he nodded. "Right," he squeaked.

But even with his somewhat reluctant promise from the day before, Kate knew that they would still get jokes from the others, especially Ryan and Esposito. Since the secret of their new relationship had now been revealed, she figured the jokes, the innuendo, and the ribbing would come pretty quickly once Rick was back, but she was still surprised that the first comment had been thrown out there even before Rick had a chance to sit down.

She saw Rick shoot her a worried glance; while they'd talked about the no PDA rule, they hadn't really talked about responding to other people's comments. And he did not want to get in trouble with her and risk his after-hours, allowed PDA time being limited as a punishment by an angry Kate. Especially when it wasn't even his fault! No way.

"Ryan, hey," he said somewhat nervously. He quickly detoured over toward Ryan and said under his breath, "Ixnay on the ommentscay." Then, more loudly, so everyone could hear, he said, "Yes, Detective Ryan, everyone has taken very good care of me since my unfortunate accident on Monday. I appreciate _everyone's_ good wishes, even Detective Beckett's."

Kate rolled her eyes. Could the man have sounded more guilty and fake? Probably not. So she got up and walked over to Ryan's desk, ignoring the looks of the others who were watching, especially Castle, who appeared to be holding his breath, wondering what she was going to do. She put her hands down on his desk and leaned over, saying softly in a breathy little voice, "Yes, Ryan, as a matter of fact, I _have_ been taking good care of him. Would you like to know _all_ of the things that I've been doing to take _such_ good care of him?"

The innuendo wasn't lost on Ryan, nor was the challenge that was present in Beckett's words or the tone of her voice. Then he had a flashback to the night that he and Esposito and Lanie were at the Old Haunt and got the text about Jeopardy in the hot tub. Sure, he'd wanted those two to get together for a while-they all had-and he might give them some grief about it, but when it came right down to it, he really did _not _want details. Even that text had been a bit too specific. And now...Beckett's comment made his eyes go big as he realized that he was about to get way more information than he was comfortable with knowing about his friends.

He leaned back away from her quickly, putting up his hands in surrender. "No, no. That's okay. No need for details. I'm sure he's doing well."

Kate smiled and stood up, shrugging her shoulders, and started to walk back to her desk. 'So easy,' she thought. She missed it when Rick breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hey, Castle, what's up?" Esposito said, breaking into a smile as he walked into the bullpen and saw the author. "Beckett been a good nursemaid?" he asked, still grinning. But then he caught a look at the wide eyes on Ryan's face and Castle shaking his head furiously. "What?"

"Nothing, Esposito," Kate told him. "Now that Castle is back to _work_," she started, emphasizing the last word, "we were just going to bring him up to speed on all of the _work-related _ things that have been happening while he's been home recovering."

Esposito looked from the Senior Detective, to Castle, to his partner, obviously not understanding the undercurrent. "Later, Dude," Ryan told him softly.

"So, guys," Castle interrupted. "Just what is that big mound of fruit doing there anyway?" He nodded again toward the big fruit basket that was sitting on Ryan's desk.

"It was for a case we closed while you two were...on vacation. The vic's family sent it as a thank you for us for getting the bad guy. Help yourself."

"Thanks. Hey, Beckett, why don't you ever get baskets of goodies sent to you?" he asked as he looked through the basket.

"Oh, I do, Castle," she said without looking up, "but we just make sure that we eat everything before you come in." It wasn't true, but she couldn't resist needling him a little bit.

He gave her a withering look before he reached back in and selected a bright yellow banana. Walking back to his chair, he remarked at how perfect it was. "Look at that...not a bruise anywhere. Gotta love a perfect banana."

But at the mention of the word banana, the heads of the three detectives snapped up and their gazes met each other, and then turned to Castle. Ryan muttered, "Oh, no...uh uh...no way," while Esposito, who was standing the closest, made a mad dash over to Castle and all but ripped the banana out of his hand. As he saw Esposito lunging for him, Castle shrank back a bit and then gaped at Esposito.

"Man, if you'd wanted the banana that badly, then you should have just asked!" Castle told him, still looking at him like he was a lunatic.

"I don't want it. I just don't want you to have it."

"Geez, Esposito, greedy much? But come on, give it back. I love bananas."

"Yeah, but apparently they don't like you. And if they don't like you, then we won't like you."

Castle looked at Esposito, confused. "Okay, guys, I'm lost. I was just trying to get some fruit. It's healthy. Do you have something against me trying to eat healthy?"

Kate, knowing what was going on, stood up and attempted to translate. "Castle, sit down," she ordered, and he complied. "I told you a few days ago that you and narcotics don't go well together, right?"

"Yeahhhhhh," he stated, still wondering what was going on, but starting to get a bad feeling from the way this direction was heading and from the ominous tone in her voice.

"Well, in your narcotic haze, you announced to our table that bananas...shall we say that bananas cause some rather undesirable effects in your digestive system."

"Oh," he replied after a few moments, but still not really understanding. But then a few more moments later, realization dawned for him and he figured out what she meant. "Ohhhhhhh! You, uh...I said..."

"Yeah. So, dude? There is just no way that you're eating this banana. No way," Esposito told him resolutely. "In fact, I don't _ever_ want to see you with a banana. Not ever. Or it won't be pretty. For you. Got it?"

Castle looked between the Esposito's menacing face and Kate standing there staring at him with her arms crossed in front of her. "Uh...yeah. Got it. But, uh..." he stammered as his gaze flitted between the detectives, "can I have an apple?"

Esposito looked at Ryan, who raised an eyebrow back and Esposito. Esposito gave a little nod and Ryan plucked the apple out of the basket and tossed it to Castle.

"Yeah, Castle," Kate said, sitting down again as Castle took a bite of the apple. She was looking down at her paperwork and said it nonchalantly, but anyone looking at her closely enough could see the smirk on her lips. "That's a good alternative for you. It has a peel, so at least you won't have to worry about growing man-boobs."

"What?" he exclaimed, almost choking on his apple. But then he vaguely remembered Kate telling him something about the the hospital...the video...oh. _Oh._

While Castle was ruminating over that and was trying to figure out what to say, Ryan got up with some files and walked over to Castle. He bent down until he was eye level with Castle, and then he said somewhat menacingly, "And Castle? I never, _ever_, want to hear you singing, humming, playing, strumming, tapping or...zipping _anything_ by Katy Perry. And if I do hear that, just know that my reaction will be worse than Esposito's would be if he sees you with a banana."

Kate and Esposito were trying to hide their smirks, newly rejuvenated by Ryan's threat. Castle looked over at them for confirmation. "Kate, was that about...Monday night?"

"Yes. Yes it was," she deadpanned.

"Dude," Esposito told him, "that bathroom...when Ryan came out...I mean, Dude, I thought Ryan was gonna need to see a shrink or something. The look on his face..." he trailed off. "I've seen guys coming out of a warzone looking better than he looked after being in the bathroom with you."

Castle realized that Esposito was needling him, so he gave him a conciliatory smile and said "Funny, ha ha." But then he looked at Kate and said in a low voice, "I'm not going to live this down for a while, am I?"

She reached for her coffee and took a sip, and then leveled her gaze on him. "Nope. Probably not." And her smirk told him that she was enjoying every minute of it.

* * *

_**That's it for the first epilogue. This one dealt with the more work-related interacitons. Next up, we have more Castle/Beckett interactions, with them talking through the logistics of their new relationship.**_

_**Hope you enjoyed this brief foray back into Plan-land. So...thoughts?**_


	79. Epilogue  2

_**Happy Castle-Monday! Although there's no Castle on tonight, not even a repeat, so I don't know how happy that is. BUT, you now have this to read. It's LOOOONG, so hopefully that will help with the withdrawl.**_

_**Thanks for the great response on the first installment of the epilogues. I'm glad I got to give you a little blast from the past, with a bit of closure thrown in.**_

_**So, here's the second part of my Plan-epilogue series. This next installment is a bit more Caskett-heavy, so I hope it satisfies the Caskett-shipper-needs that some of you felt was lacking in the last several chapters. After I wrote this, I was really happy with the with the way that it turned out, so I hope that you are too.**_

_**There's a very minor reference in this chapter that doesn't fit totally within he time period that I've set up; I refer to an episode that aired about two months after this time period. I tried to take it out, but I liked it better with the reference in there so I decided to leave it. Hope you all forgive me. **_

_**Enjoy!**_

_**Disclaimer: the same as always.**_

* * *

"Yes, I do. It's time."

"Kate, how many times do I have to tell you, you do _not_ have to. There's no reason. Absolutely none." He leaned back in the chair behind his desk, clasping his hands behind his head but taking care with the bump that was still there from the accident at the beginning of the week.

She was perched on his desk in front of him, having moved his computer to the side when she sat down to break it to him. "Rick, yes there is. A big one. And she's in her room right now, studying for her history test. You know this whole thing has been weird for her, especially with the latest development," she said, holding up her hand to display the ring. "We've gotten to a little better place over the last few days and I'm happy about that, but I just don't want to overdo it right away. You're feeling better, and I think it would be nice to let her just have a night and a morning where she doesn't have to worry about being on her guard because I'm here."

"She's not on her guard." His tone said how exasperated he was with her argument.

"Rick, _yes_ she is. She's polite, because you've raised her to be that way. But she's not entirely comfortable with me being here yet, and I can see that. I think me not being here will be good in the long run."

"But how can she get more comfortable with you if you're not even here?" he all but whined back at her.

"I think some space will help her become more comfortable with the _idea_ of me. And I'll be around, but I don't want her to think that I'm just swooping in and taking over her home and her father. I am _not_ moving in. At least not yet. Besides, I've already been here for the past three nights, and I didn't bring any more clothes with me anyway. It won't kill either of us if I go home tonight. Come on; we've been over this already. You know we have."

"I don't want you to go," he pouted.

"I know. But I'll see you tomorrow."

"But what about tonight? I'll miss you. You know I sleep better now when we're together, and I know you do too."

"It's a sacrifice I'll make for the greater good."

"Beckett..."

"Rick, you'll be fine. Just make sure you actually _do_ something with your daughter, not sit around moping all night because I'm not here and you didn't get your way."

He scooted his chair forward so he was right in between her legs as he leaned forward and hugged her, resting his head against her stomach. Then he pulled back a little bit so he could look up at her face, and he lowered his voice when he spoke next. "Kate, with the hospital thing, we haven't...you know...since we got back from Florida. Since the plane."

"You mean...boinked?" she asked, smiling down at him with a raised eyebrow, referring to the term that he'd used several times after they'd become intimate in Florida.

"Well, yeah. I...miss you," he whined.

"And I miss you too...like that," she told him honestly, leaning down to give him a little kiss. But a little restraint won't hurt us. And you're still recovering."

"Kate..."

"Castle, come on. Be a big boy."

"I _want_ to be a big boy. A really big boy. And I want to _show_ you how big of a boy I can be. In fact, the more we talk about this, I think my boy is getting bigger and bigger..." he said with some semblance of a leer.

She swatted him on the arm for his bad innuendo as she smiled and rolled her eyes, and then she put her hands on his chest and pushed the rolling chair back out of her way, so she could hop off the desk. "And that's my cue. Rest, Rick. Spend time with Alexis. Heal some more, and then maybe this weekend..." she finished suggestively.

"The weekend starts tomorrow, you know," he reminded her.

"Yes, I'm aware of that. But it also goes two days past that. So we'll see. Come on," she said, gesturing for him to get out of the chair. You can walk me out."

"Don't you have to pack?" he asked hopefully, wanting to delay her departure as long as possible.

"Already did."

"Damn."

She laughed at the look on his face, but she kept walking toward the door, where she grabbed her coat from the tree and shrugged into it. He noticed that she already had her bag waiting by the door.

"God, why do I feel like you're moving out, leaving me?" he asked in a sad voice as he pulled her into a hug and buried his face in her hair.

"It's that whole suitcase thing. Kind of evokes that feeling, I guess. But neither one is true, because I can't move out if I've never moved in, and there's no way I'm leaving you. I'm just going home for a bit."

He pulled back and looked pleadingly into her eyes. "This could be your home, you know. You know I want you to move in here. You even have a parking space."

"I know. And someday, it will be my home. But just...not yet."

"When?" he asked, his impatience showing through.

She rolled her eyes. "Sometime, Rick. You'll be the first to know. But you know what? _This_ is the important thing," she said, holding up her left hand to show off the ring that she was still getting used to wearing. "This says that it'll happen eventually. Okay?"

He nodded with a slight grin, knowing that she was right. He still got a charge out of looking at the ring on her finger, knowing that she was wearing it so much sooner than he'd ever dreamed possible. "I love you, you know. Even if you think you have to spend the night away from me."

"I know," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him to her. "And I love you too." She pulled back and found his lips with hers. After the kiss, she gave him another quick hug before pulling totally away from him and reaching down to grab her bag from the floor. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Bet on it."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Unfortunately, even though she felt good about her decision, she found that she didn't have much more luck getting to sleep that night than she did her first night back from Florida. Because Rick wasn't there. And it still made her mad. She may have agreed to marry him, but even with that, it still didn't mean that they'd spend every single night together, so she'd have to get used to being able to sleep alone once in a while. He might be on book tours and she might be...doing something. Maybe she and Alexis would go somewhere sometime, for a girls weekend away or something, if they got more comfortable with each other eventually.

But she did manage to fall asleep, eventually. She found that she kept listening to the different sounds that she could hear in her apartment, different than Rick's bedroom and certainly different than Florida, so she put a pair of earplugs in her ears, figuring that no sound was better than different sounds. Then she settled into a somewhat fitful sleep.

Fitful was one way to describe her sleep, because her mind kept going back to the comment that Rick had made about them not having been together since the plane. She'd slept with him in his bed at his loft, and that's _all_ they had done. He was wiped out from his injuries, and while she would have happily submitted to his carnal urges, they seemed to take a back seat to his body just healing from his injuries. So they were both content to be together, even though they weren't 'together' in the biblical sense. But that made his observation come back to haunt her now as she was missing him, as her subconscious mind conjured him up in a dream-state in the beginnings of an erotic dream.

She was in a state somewhere between full wakefulness and being fully asleep, almost as if she was in some sort of hypnotic trance and was aware, but was still letting her subconscious mind drive her thoughts. And sometime in the middle of the night, her dream became very vivid, almost realistically so. It was a combination of the intensity of their coupling on the plane, with the literal heat of when they were in the hot tub and the storm was raging only feet from them. She could feel him on her, starting to consume her. She could feel the heat pool in between her legs and even in her dream, she wished he was there. She could feel his hard body as she ran her hands up his naked sides under his shirt. God, this was awful...exquisitely awful. Because right now, she wished she had stayed with him one more night, so she could experience this for real, not just in her dream.

But somehow, even in her dream state, she knew that it was only a dream. She was already frustrated at him not being there, and if she allowed herself to continue with the dream, she would only get more and more aroused, which would only leave her with one choice...one that she didn't want to have to resort to: to take care of things herself. She wanted to be with Rick; she wanted the actual Rick to drive her to the edge of her sanity, not just the thought of him in her dream with her own hand having to fill in for not having him with her. As frustrating as it was, she wanted him, the real him, not just the dream of him, even if the dream was so real she could almost feel him.

So she forced her eyes open, thinking before she opened them that if she just opened her eyes, the taunting visions of what the dream-Rick was doing and could do to her body would go away, and she could calm herself down and think of something else that would take her mind off of who wasn't there. So she made her eyes open, but when she did, she was not prepared for what she saw.

A pair of lusty blue eyes staring back at her in the semi-darkness.

And she became aware that the naked sides that she felt of his were actually _his. _The actual man. The actual man was here, _right now_, in her bed. She didn't know how that was possible, but at this point, she didn't really care.

She could see his mouth moving, but she couldn't hear him. Belatedly, she reached up and pulled the earplugs from her ears, and then grabbed his face and brought his mouth to hers for a searing kiss. The hell with what he was saying...he was here, now, and she wasn't going to waste another moment listening to him _talk_ when he could be doing other things with that talented mouth of his. When he could continue to do for real the things she'd just been dreaming about.

And she wasn't going to question him being here; she was just going to damn well enjoy it.

She could feel his 'big boy'-as he had referred to it earlier-pressing against her hip, and she shifted a bit, bringing him more on top of her as their mouths battled each other in a kiss. But they both had clothing on, and even though she loved the feeling of him on top of her, she needed to get rid of those barriers. She pushed him off of her so she could sit up, and she whipped the sleep shirt that she was wearing over her head. Then she leaned down to his pants, which were still on him but were already undone. As he got rid of the rest of his shirt, she pulled his pants and boxers over that impressive bulge, freeing it and showing them both that he was definitely a 'big boy'. She wasted no time in leaning down to kiss his stomach, and began to trail her kisses lower, and lower, until...

His sharp oath when she took him into her mouth made her want to laugh in a moment of giddy lust. She took him fully into her mouth, and began to work on him with her lips and tongue, sucking and squeezing, trying to see how far she could take him. She got her answer a short time later when, after some moans that were accompanied by heavy pants, he violently pulled her head away from him and reversed their positions on the bed, pulling her panties off and spreading her legs. He started with wet kisses that traveled up the inside of one of her thighs. But before he could find her wet core with his seeking mouth, she pulled a little suprise move on him and had him tumbling down onto her, face to face, chest to chest, with that hard part of his body meeting the very moist part of hers. All she had to do was lift her hips a bit to impale herself with him. Their twin moans echoed throughout her room as he slid deep into her and they began to move together.

"I was going to..." he grunted out.

"Too close, Rick," she replied in a breathy pant. "My dream...already close...oh, God, that's good." Then she made another move and rolled them over, with her straddling him now, riding him, trying to making him sink further into her with every long stroke. His fingers came up to pinch her nipples lightly as she rode him, and finally she could take no more. She threw her head back as the waves of ecstacy overtook her, and as she could feel herself clench around him, she could also feel him give up as he exploded within her, his pants and moans echoing hers.

When she was spent, she collapsed on him as the aftershocks still could be felt in each of them. He put his arms around her and held her tightly. After several minutes, she finally had enough energy to raise up to look at him.

"God, are you _grinning_? And what are you doing here anyway?"

"How can I not grin after _that_?" he asked. "And I thought it was obvious what I'm doing here. Was I just _was_ doing here."

"You're really in my apartment?" she asked incredulously, as she looked at her bedside clock. "at two o'clock in the morning?"

"Once again, I thought that was obvious. Unless you thought I was a dream."

"Uh, I kind of did," she admitted before she could stop herself. Darn, she knew he was going to run with that one.

"You did? You were dreaming about me?" Even in the semi-darkness, she could see the cocky grin threatening to emerge.

"Yeah. Before I left the loft, you had to go and mention that we hadn't done anything since the plane, and I was...missing you." God, that was putting her arousal mildly. "But speaking of that, what _are_ you doing here anyway? And I don't mean _that_. Why are you...Oh, my God. You just...we just had a booty call! A middle of the night, cross-town booty call!"

"Yup," he said smugly. "Although there was no actual call, you know. Or maybe it was telepathic, because I'd say we certainly had the same idea."

"How did you get in here anyway?"

He had the grace to look a little guilty, a little sheepish then as he admitted, "I took your key and had a copy made. I never got around to getting one, and I thought...until you moved in officially..."

"You _stole_ my key?" She stared at him incredulously.

"Uh...yeah?"

And then much to the surprise of both of them, she started laughing. "You _stole_ my key, had it copied, and then came over here for a booty call. God, that's priceless. And _so_ Castle." Once, she might have complained about having her space or personal boundaries, but she couldn't muster up even a modicum of anger. It just felt too good having him here.

"At least you don't have to worry about me not wanting you anymore? Now that we're back, I mean."

"There is that. But Rick," Kate said, snuggling her head into his neck, "you're still recovering. You're supposed to be resting."

"But you helped me. I'll be able to rest a lot better now."

"Alexis..."

"Is asleep right now, at least I hope she is. We had a nice evening, although she was really surprised to find out that you'd left."

"Did you tell her why I left?"

"I did."

"And?"

"She was surprised, I think. She sort of looked like she wanted to say something, but then she caught herself. But I can see now what you meant, and I hate to say it, but you were right. Even with all of her progress at accepting things in the last couple of days, she did seem a bit more...oh, I don't know...talkative or something tonight. She did ask when you'd be back, and I told her I hoped this weekend."

Kate nodded against him. "Speaking of this weekend, wasn't _this_," she emphasized, obviously talking about their nakedness in her bed and their previous burst of activity, "supposed to wait for this weekend?"

"Well, see, here's my reasoning-"

"Oh, great, I can tell this is going to be good," she interrupted sarcastically, knowing how he could 'reason' through something to make it work for him.

Ignoring her comment, he continued. "You said Alexis needed me and I should spend some time with her alone. And I did. Then, you said that maybe this weekend, we could...you know."

"Boink?"

"You really like that word now, don't you?" he asked, smiling down at her. "But yes. And I pointed out that technically the weekend started tomorrow, a point with which you agreed."

"Yes, but you're here tonight, so you're not really making a very strong case for yourself, Ricky-boy."

"Uh, uh, uh, Detective," he chided jokingly. "Look at your clock. Or actually, you don't have to. You already pointed out that it's after two o'clock in the morning, which means that technically, it's tomorrow. Yesterday's tomorrow, so that means that our...boinking...is right according to schedule."

She rolled her eyes, amused again at how he'd made the situation adapt to his particular form of logic. But she couldn't deny that she'd been missing him, and wanting him, and that had to be about the best way to wake up. But speaking of waking up...

"Not that I didn't end up somewhat enjoying your particular interpretation of my plan, but we really need to get some sleep. Well, I need to get some sleep. Some of us have to work tomorrow and can't saunter in close to lunch time." Then a thought occurred to her. "And what about Alexis, anyway? Wasn't part of my plan that you should spend some time with her before she leaves for school? You can't do that if you're here having a booty call."

"Never fear. I left a note, just in case she happened to wake up, saying that I couldn't sleep and was going for a walk. Which is perfectly true. I couldn't sleep for wanting you, and I did do some walking."

"Along with a few other things..."

"Yes," he agreed, giving her a kiss and squeezing her bare bottom. "But-and I can't believe I'm saying this-I do need to get back to the loft soon, so I can take care of the note..."

"And then she'll be none the wiser that you were ever even gone."

"Exactly. And we can share a nice father-daughter breakfast together." He wrapped his arms around her a little more tightly. "I don't want to leave."

"I know.

"But what about tomorrow? Will you come back...stay at the loft?"

"Do you mean tomorrow tomorrow or today tomorrow?"

Rick pulled back to look at her, surprise on his face. "That was...kinda cool. You sounded like me."

"Yeah...kind of scary from my perspective though."

"Funny. But in answer to your question, I mean whichever answer means you'll be staying at the loft at the soonest possible opportunity."

She seemed to think about it for a few moments, and then she said, "Do me a favor, Rick. Ask your daughter about it. And really listen to what she says. I'll stay over again when she's really okay with it."

He narrowed his eyes at her and stared at her for a solid fifteen seconds, but then when he spoke, he said simply, "Thank you."

She was puzzled. It was not the response she expected. "For what?"

"For thinking of my kid first. You really will make a great mother when _we_ have kids."

The lazy way in which the words were spoken was in direct contrast to the effect they had on her. When she registered those words, she pushed against his chest as she quickly raised up to a kneeling position. The shock was evident on her face. "What? Geez, Castle! I thought we weren't talking about that stuff for a while."

He smiled a roguish grin at her. "On the contrary, _my dear fiancee_, we agreed not to talk about children until a certain piece of jewelry was adorning your left hand." Before she could stop him, he reached for her left hand and raised it up in between them, showcasing the ring that she wore. "And look at that! It already _is_. So I guess that question is fair game now. So...wanna have a baby?"

"Castle!" she shreiked, pulling her hand away from his.

"Oh, okay...fine. I guess we should maybe wait a _little_ while. But can we practice a lot?" he asked enthusiastically.

"Castle!" she said again. "I...you can't...ugh!" And she grabbed one of her pillows and swatted the good side of his head with it.

He tried to duck out of the way but wasn't successful. But he did grab the wrist that swung the pillow at him and gave a little yank, which brought her down to sprawl on his chest once again. Their faces were inches apart, and she noticed right away that the joking glint that was in his eyes just moments before was now gone as he looked at her, and it was replaced by something...deeper. And just that look made her stomach go all fluttery inside. It was that same feeling that she got at the most unexpected times, like now. It was different from the want, or the need, or the lust she'd just felt for him. It was like this incredible feeling of contentment, almost like a drug. It made her feel bonelessly relaxed and content and tingly all at the same time, and it was all because of this man and the way he was looking at her right now. Just a look. And that feeling...oh, she wished she could bottle it, because she never wanted it to go away.

He raised a hand and combed through her somewhat tangled hair. "God, I love you," he told her, his husky words making that fluttery feeling increase. And when she would have expected him to kiss her, he just continued to stare at her reverently.

With him looking at her like that, with the love just pouring out of his eyes at her, she found it hard to speak. "I...I love you too," she whispered to him, not trusting her full voice with all of the emotion that was flowing through her right now as she gazed back at him. Time stood still. And then when he wiped a finger softly over her cheek, she realized that all of that sudden emotion had needed somewhere to go, and it had formed tears in her eyes that she hadn't even been aware of, that had escaped for her fiance to dry for her.

"Kate," he said huskily, but then he shook his head just a bit like he couldn't get any more words out.

"What?" she whispered. "Tell me."

He shook his head again. "I just...there's so much. Inside. I don't even know what to say. I just feel...I almost can't believe that I'm laying here with you, like this. It just hits me sometimes, you know? This...it's like a gift, the best thing in the world. And I know I'm just so lucky." And then, not being able to formulate any more coherent thoughts, he finally did kiss her, touching his lips to hers in one of the most tender kisses between them that either could remember.

When they broke away, she noticed that his eyes seemed a little moist now too. "I know. I know that..this...us...is right. It feels right. And I..." She stopped abruptly, closing her eyes and seemingly trying to gather courage for what she was about to say. But when she spoke, her words were spoken resolutely, and it brought a smile to his face and another facet of light to his eyes that were already shining with so much love. "I _do_ want to have a baby with you. I really do." And then, once the words were out, she smiled at him, bright and beautiful. "Just not quite...yet. But I do want it, someday. I can almost see us fighting over who gets to hold him and rock him to sleep. But even when it does happen, even if I know I want it to happen, I think I'll still probably freak out a little bit anyway. So be patient with me, okay?"

"I know you probably will, and that's okay. I think most people do. It's a big thing...very freak-out-worthy. But I'll just be ready with the chocolate cake," he told her.

"I'm gonna hold you to that," she warned with a smile.

"A small price to pay for creating a new person with the love of my life," he said and drew her into an embrace. And just like that, as she settled against him, that flutter in her belly came back once again.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Late the next afternoon, Kate was sitting at her desk when she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. Kate pulled it out of her pocket to see who was calling and what she saw made her draw in a quick breath. Alexis. They'd reached a peaceful coexistence over the last few days while Kate had been staying at the loft, and Kate was cautiously happy. There was really nothing more than polite small talk between them, but at least it wasn't tense. It was just...cautious. But Kate also remembered the confused, sullen girl from Monday night, and she hoped that the Monday night version wasn't back.

She answered the phone and tried to inject a casual but welcoming tone into her voice, irrationally preparing for an angry Alexis but hoping for a bubbly one. And she felt relief when the version that she got was more in tune with the bubbly variety. The girl apologized profusely, but asked if she could possibly get away for a bit. Kate wasn't really in the middle of anything, so they arranged to meet at a coffee shop around the corner.

Fifteen minutes later, they were seated at a small table in the corner. "Are you sure you don't want me to call your dad? He was in for a little while, but I sent him home because we really didn't have anything to do and I wanted him to rest."

"No, I talked to him earlier so I knew he wasn't with you. That's why I called you."

She wanted to talk to Kate? Alone? Kate was getting a worried feeling, with Alexis wanting to talk to her and her alone. Was she going to try to warn her away from Rick? "Alexis, I'm sorry, but I'm not really following you."

"Okay, this is going to get kind of weird. But part of me doesn't believe that I'm even asking this, with all of the weird stuff that's happened since the weekend, but when are you going to come back to the loft?"

"I...uh, well...have you talked to your dad about this?"

"Well, last night when you weren't there, he told me that you went home because of me." Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, and she looked extremely uncomfortable after she blurted it out.

God, she was going to kill him. If he really put it like that, she was going to kill him. Or maim him, or something. She pressed her fingers to her forehead briefly and closed her eyes before she opened them again and tried to find words that would explain things better. "That's only partially true, Alexis. The reason that I went back to my own apartment was because I don't live at the loft, and you do. It's your home, and I'd already been there for three days, at your dad's request. I needed more clothes, and I didn't want to infringe on your home life any more than I already had. Your dad was feeling better, so I decided it was time. And I told him specifically that it would be good for you to have some time without me there."

"Oh. He didn't say a lot, but he said that you wanted to give me some space or something. And I know when people say it that way, it usually means something bad. Like when people break up."

"No. That's not it at all."

Kate was surprised to see somethat looked like relief on the girl's face. Relief? That she didn't break up with Rick? Really? Well, she supposed that was a good sign. So she continued with what she was saying. "He was right, but he probably just didn't explain enough. I just know it's hard to feel comfortable when someone you're not used to has invaded your home."

She nodded. "Sort of. But...I'm getting used to...things. So back to my original question, when are you coming back?"

"I told your dad that I'd come back when it was okay with you."

The girl looked surprised at Kate's answer, but she hid it well. "Oh."

There was no conversation for a long minute, while they sipped their lattes. Finally Alexis broke the silence. "I've always made my dad happy."

Kate wasn't sure where that statement came from, but she couldn't argue with it. "That's very true," she replied benignly.

"But now...now I'm not the only one that makes him happy. You do too. And I know he's happier when you're there. He...uh...he loves you. I get it. It's still kind of weird, I mean how everything has happened, but I get it."

"I love him too, Alexis," Kate said softly, hoping to reassure the girl once again.

"I know. And that's good, because you make him happy." She paused and then let out a big sigh. "I told you this would get weird, didn't I? But last night when you weren't there, dad just wasn't as happy. I mean, he wasn't sad or anything, but he's been different, just like...creepy happy ever since you got back from Florida, you know?"

"I...uh...well, I'll have to take your word on that. Before Florida, he was just my partner and my friend, but now, there's...uh, more, I guess. So I don't really know how to compare things, because I can't."

Alexis took what looked like another fortifying breath before she said, "Look, it would just be better if you'd come back to the loft, stay there for a while. Maybe just give it a trial run before you move in for real? I've been thinking about it all day, and I think it would be best. It's going to happen anyway, so we might as well start it now, right? Why wait?"

To say Kate was taken aback would be an understatement. "Wha...uh, Alexis...I don't... Okay." She took a breath. "Not what I expected you to say. Just...why?"

"Because like I said, it's going to happen sometime. And if you're there with him, then I'll get to see that happy dad that I saw when he knew you were there with us a few days ago." She let out a dramatic breath. "And then he won't have to go sneaking out in the middle of the night to go see you."

After the last sentence, Kate froze and replayed it in her head a few times to make sure she really just heard what she thought she heard. Alexis knew that Rick had come to her place last night? If Kate had had even the slightest idea that there was any way that Alexis would have known about her father's middle-of-the-night visit to her, she might have been able to control her reaction at least a small amount. But as it was, she was floored. Flummoxed. Stunned. She felt her mouth drop open in shock and she was powerless to stop it. "Wha...Oh, God. Alexis..."

"No, don't worry about it. It's kind of sweet, in a kind of weird and really, really awkward way that I don't want to think about in any sort of detail, if you know what I mean."

"How..." Kate couldn't even finish the question.

"I got up to get a drink; I wanted some juice so I came downstairs to the kitchen. Then I saw that Dad left me a note and he didn't say that he went to your place, but really, who just goes outside for a random walk in the middle of the night? In the winter? Come on. So yeah, duh, it wasn't hard to figure out that he went to your place. You know, because it was the first night that you weren't there and everything."

Kate opted not to say anything, just taking a sip of her latte instead.

"And anyway, I left the note where it was but it was totally gone this morning, and Dad was making me breakfast and he was all smiley and happy, but he was like, really tired and yawning a lot. So that kind of clinched it right there. I mean, I'm not stupid. And my dad has never before been prone to go out 'walking' in the middle of the night." She made air quotes with her fingers, emphasizing how transparent his excuse was. "But anyway, it's not really safe for him to go running out in the middle of the night to be...whatevering...like that," Alexis smiled, using the term that she'd used for her grandmother's all-night escapades.

When Kate heard the word, her eyes got wide again before she closed them and thought, 'this cannot be happening.'

"And he told me when we talked a few days ago that he's serious and committed and all of that. And I don't think you'll be sending me to boarding school," she said, stopping her explanation, looking at Kate. "Right?" she prompted, obviously wanting confirmation of some sort.

"Boarding school? What? Why are you asking me? I have no idea about prep schools. Where you go to school is totally between you and your father." Kate's response was a little bit abrupt, but she was still reeling from the 'whatevering' comment and the fact that Alexis knew about her father's late-night visit, and she honestly had no idea where the topic of boarding school had come from.

"Oh." But that somehow seemed to be the right answer because the girl smiled then. "So you're engaged and even though it's been really fast and it's still really weird, he obviously wants you there, and you're going to be living there sometime soon anyway. So you might as well make him happy and just come back to the loft tonight."

Kate was finally regaining some of her composure, and her thought process. "But what about you, Alexis? Do _you_ want me there?"

She gave Kate a discerning, but wary, look. "Honestly?"

"Honestly. To the point of being brutally honest. Because it needs to be addressed." She smiled at the girl. "Don't worry, I can take it." Just the fact that she was still sitting here after the 'whatevering' comment was enough of an indication that she could take it.

"Well, then...I mean, I don't want you to hover and get all in our business..." she trailed off. Then she realized how that sounded, so she tried to clarify. "Um, I just might want to sometimes talk to my dad..."

"Alone?"

"Well, yeah, sometimes" she said kind of reluctantly.

"Alexis, I _want_ you to be able to see your father. Alone. You should be able to. But we talked about this already, right? I'm not going to try to take him away from you. I don't want to interfere with the relationship that you two have. In' a strange kind of way, _you_ are part of what makes him the person that he is. And to try to take that away or change that relationship would mean that he would change. And I don't want that."

"Okay, I guess."

"So, back to my question...do you want me at the loft? Or maybe more to the point, would you mind if I was there?"

"I want my dad to be happy. And I've seen over the last few days that he _is_ happy when you're there. Or at least when he knows you _will_ be there. So I guess, uh, no...I wouldn't mind if you were there."

Kate, sitting there, her hands around her latte, let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding when she heard Alexis' words. "Okay, then."

"Yeah."

Then a thought popped into Kate's head, and she knew she had to address it before they went any farther. "Alexis, if I'm...uh...actually living there, in the loft, at some point, then I need you to promise to tell me when you need some 'dad time'."

"Okay." She nodded, and then she got a gleam in her eye. "And if dad's being unreasonable, will you tell him? Like if he wants to buy me any more stuff with sequins? Or like when he tracked my phone?"

"Deal. But you should know that I already gave him hell about the phone tracking thing."

"Oh. Really?" The girl looked surprised, pleasantly surprised.

"Yeah," she laughed. "Not that he listened to me much at the time." Alexis nodded her head at the comment, knowing how her dad was when he thought he was right, justified.

"So..." Alexis said expectantly.

"So...what?"

"When are you coming over?"

"Well, if you're sure about this, then if we don't catch a body, I suppose I could go home and repack and be over by seven or so. But Alexis, does your dad know anything about this?"

"No. I wanted this to be between you and me. Besides, if he was here you know he'd totally hover and try to be all happy happy joy joy and we couldn't discuss _anything_." Kate smiled. Alexis really had her father pegged, that was for sure. "So should we surprise him with you? He'd probably like that."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He called her about thirty minutes after she got back to the precinct from her meeting with Alexis.

Without even a returned greeting after she answered the phone, he asked, "So are you coming over tonight? You never really gave me an answer this morning."

"Have you talked to Alexis yet?"

"No." His voice sounded disappointed. "You know we didn't really get a chance to talk about, well, you, very much this morning, and she hasn't come home yet this afternoon. But Kate," he told her, turning on his 'reasonable and convincing' voice, "I'm sure it will be fine."

"That's not how it goes, Castle. We had a deal. You check with your daughter and see what she says. You were gone for over two weeks, with me, and then after you got back, I was still there. And you went and got yourself hurt. She's hardly had any time with you, and if I come over now, I want to make sure it's okay with her. Rick, we have the rest of our lives to spend time together, but making sure your kid is okay with us, with me...that has to be done now."

Of course, she knew what the answer was because she'd just spoken with Alexis barely an hour ago. But she knew he was trying to whine his way into getting what he wanted, and that didn't work with her. And it wasn't fair to his family. He was kind of cute when he did the puppy-dog eye thing, but she'd never let him know that. He was trying to charm his way out of this, and while she was finding herself less and less immune to his charms, _this _was something that she knew she needed to stand firm with.

On Rick's side, he was hoping to just do some smooth talking and get Kate to agree to come over again. He really wanted her with him again. His daughter had hardly ever caused him a moment's concern, so he always thought she'd be fine with Kate. But Kate was like a dog with a bone; she wanted things to be firmly okay with Alexis before they went any farther. And on a fatherly level, he loved that she was so concerned with his daughter's feelings, even before her own and his own. But on the personal level, the 'man' level, he was frustrated because she was basically putting conditions on them being together. Even though the conditions might be valid and honorable, he was still frustrated that the conditions existed, because he wanted to be with her, and he wanted her to be with him, and he didn't want anything to get in the way of that.

"Fine," he relented. "I'll talk to her. Again. But then will you come over?"

"Depending on the answer, yes. So talk to your kid, and call me tonight and let me know what's up." She gave it a beat. "Hey, I have to go. Call me if the coast is clear, okay?"

"Kate-"

"Love you. Bye." And she clicked off her phone, smiling at the sputtering and the barrage of words she knew he was trying to get in before he was disconnected. Right now, it was kind of funny, just because she knew that he was probably stressing somewhere between a pout and a fit at not immediately getting his way _and_ not being allowed to plead his case. But she knew he'd survive and that the surprise of her being there would be worth it.

On the way back from her meeting with Alexis, her mind had been drifting and she'd allowed herself to think of that big, soft bed of his and all of things they could be doing tonight. She figured that he might be a bit put out by her subterfuge at first, once he realized that he'd been played, but she was planning to make it up to him tonight. He'd cave. Yeah, she thought with a smile, he'd definitely forgive her.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She was puttering in the kitchen, casting furtive glances toward the door every few minutes. And it seemed that she had a partner in crime, however totally unexpected that was. Alexis was cutting fruit for the dessert that she'd planned later. When Alexis had told her what she'd planned for dessert, Kate felt like she had that afternoon when they'd met in the coffee shop, like a deer caught in headlights. She just hoped she could hold it together long enough to keep it G-rated-and that Rick could too. Having once been a teenage girl herself, Kate had no illusions of Alexis' naivete, or lack thereof, but there were definitely levels, and there were just some things that certainly didn't need to be expounded upon. But even with the potential uncomfortable moments that were waiting for them, part of Kate couldn't wait to see the look on her fiance's face when it was announced exactly what dessert really was.

Alexis had sent her father to the store for ingredients and supplies that they really didn't need, just to get him out of the loft, and during that time, Kate had sneaked into the loft and had begun working on dinner. Although Kate was worried, Alexis was apparently true to her word and actually seemed to be anticipating surprising her father with the live present of Kate when he walked back into the loft after his 'errand'. They worked on dinner, and chatted as companionably as they had on the phone when Alexis had thanked her for the clothing after they'd returned from Florida.

Finally, when dinner was almost done, they heard a key in the lock. And they heard bags rustling and banging against the door, although the door never opened. Then the doorbell rang. Kate and Alexis looked at each other, and then Alexis bobbed her head toward the kitchen. Kate followed her lead and went further inside the kitchen, while Alexis went to the door to find her father.

She opened the door to find her dad, who was laden with bags after his impromtu shopping match. "Dad!"

"Well, thank you for opening the door, daughter," he said somewhat sarcastically as he shoved a few bags at her and stepped further inside, starting to head toward the kitchen to set everything down. "How about the next time you decide you 'need' all of this stuff, give me a little advance warning, huh? Then at least I'd have the time to rent a pack mule. I'm not sure exactly what army you're planning..." His words just stopped as he reached the counter and heaved some of the bags on top of it, finally looking up. Because when he looked up, he found a demurely smiling Kate leaning casually against the other side of the counter.

"Hey, there, Castle," she said casually, as Rick promptly dropped the rest of the bags that he held on the floor.

One thing Rick did not expect when he came back to the loft was to find Kate there. For all of her protestations, he was trying to resign himself to the high probability of another night spent without her. But now she was here. And he felt the grin begin to form on his face. "Kate! How...what...you're here." He started to ask why she was there and how it had happened, but then he realized he didn't really want to know. So he just stated the obvious, that she was indeed there.

"That I am. I had a very nice invitation to spend a few days with you here, assuming that's okay with you?" She subtley shifted her eyes to where Alexis stood off to the side of them. It wasn't so much that even Alexis would have noticed, but Rick had spent years studying her and he understood her meaning. When he registered what she was saying-that she was staying here for a few days!-his eyes got slightly bigger, but then he tore his gaze away from Kate and looked at his daughter, who was standing there with somewhat of a smirk on her face.

"You?" he asked his daughter simply.

"Dad, don't just stand there staring. It isn't polite. You have to pick up the bags you dropped. I really hope the eggs weren't in one of them. And yes, I invited Kate over for a few days. She's going to be living here eventually, right? I mean, you _are_ still getting married sometime?"

"Yeah?" he said, happy that Kate was here but still wondering what was happening and how Alexis was involved. And why she was...pleasant about everything. Then after he got the rest of the bags put on the counter, he said, "Will someone tell me exactly _what_ is going on here? I have to admit I'm kind of lost."

Kate walked around the counter until she was standing near Alexis. "It's exactly what we just said, Rick. Alexis invited me over for a few days. She argued her point that we should do a trial run of me living here for a few days to see how it goes."

"But I didn't...Alexis, pumpkin, I didn't even get a chance to ask you...are you sure you're okay with this?"

"Dad, really. Do you really want to stand here an analyze this, or do you want to start unpacking the food and helping us with dinner?"

He started to say something, and then he caught Kate's raised eyebrow, challenging him to just shut up and go with it. And then it hit him that sometimes, just going with it was the best possible course of action. He didn't really need to know exactly how this had all come about; she was here, they were all together, and that was what mattered.

As he walked over to stand in front of the ladies, he said, "Dinner, yes, but first things first." And he reached out his arms to gather his daughter to him on one side and Kate to him on the other. Holding them both, he murmured, "Now this is about the best way to come home."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Dinner went better than any of them probably would have imagined. They ate companionably and joked around, and Kate tentatively even brought up the old topic of she and Alexis going dress shopping. Neither had plans for the following afternoon, so they decided to try a short trip to see what they could find.

Alexis shooed them into the study while she got dessert ready, and Rick looked at her questioningly when she went along without protest. "What in the world is she doing?" he asked her.

"Oh, you'll see. Don't worry, you'll like it." Maybe too much, she added to herself silently.

Since Kate had closed the study door behind them so Rick couldn't peek at what Alexis was doing, he decided to use it and quickly pushed Kate up against it as he lowered his head and kissed her senseless. When they were forced to part, both breathing heavily, he confessed, "I've wanted to do that ever since I saw you standing in my kitchen." He then put his hands under her shirt, and started touching her bare skin, letting his fingertips ghost lightly over her ribs on their way to find other, more intimate parts.

But as much as she liked-loved-what he was doing, she knew they'd have to go back out soon so she made him stop. Of course, he gave her a pout, but by then Alexis was calling them to come back into the living room. She gave him a quick kiss, smoothed his hair, and opened the door.

When they were close enough to see what Alexis had set up, Kate turned around to see Rick's face when he caught sight of it.

A very decadent-looking chocolate fountain. Decadent-looking in purely the dessert sense for the teenager, but for the two adults, it brought entirely different decadent visions to their minds.

"Alexis, this looks wonderful!" Kate told her, able to give a good, appropriate reaction because she'd been forewarned. Turning to Rick, she said to him, "Alexis was telling me earlier how you always used to have a chocolate fondue party as a celebration for different things."

Still staring at the fountain, he said automatically, "Yeah, good grades-which means that she gets a _lot_ of chocolate fondue-a school snow day, when she lost her first tooth..."

"I'd forgotten about that one! That really _was_ a big deal," Alexis told Kate. "I was the last one in my class to lose my first tooth. By six months or something. All of the other kids were getting rich from the tooth fairy and I still had a full mouth of teeth."

"That was a different fountain though," Rick admitted. We had to get a new one a few years ago; the old one died from overuse."

"Celebrated a lot, did you?" Kate asked with a smirk.

"Of course, Detective! Would you expect any less from me?" And then, in a lower voice, he said for her ears only, "You knew about this?" At her miniscule nod and slight grin, he said sarcastically, "Thanks for the warning."

"Guys, this is ready," Alexis interrupted. "Can we dig in?"

But now was the moment of truth. She picked up a plump strawberry with one of the fondue forks and put it in the fountain of chocolate. When it was covered, she put it up to her mouth and took a bite out of the berry, wrapping her lips around it as she bit into it. She looked up to see Rick looking at her with big eyes. She licked the chocolate off her lips, watching him the whole time. She was doing it to drive him crazy, and it looked like it was working. The fountain had been all Alexis' idea, but that didn't mean that Kate couldn't have fun with it, right?

He could only think of one of their first mornings in Florida, when she appeared in that one eye-torture swimming suit for the first time-right after very seductively eating very plump strawberries in front of him. He kept his gaze trained on her, and it was almost as if the memory of her in Florida was merging with the live version here right now. And he couldn't do anything except stare.

But their staring contest was interrupted with Alexis saying, "Dad, aren't you going to try anything?" It was enough to prompt him into stabbing a piece of pound cake with his fork and holding it under the fountain. Then he felt something touch his arm, and when he looked up, he saw his daughter innocently holding out the can of squirtable whipped cream that she knew he liked to use whenever they used the chocolate fountain.

Whipped cream. Chocolate. Kate. And then his mind flashed back to Kate's whipped cream bikini, and how he 'removed' it from her...

"N..No thanks, pumpkin," he said, his voice breaking as he tried to formulate appropriate conversation for his daughter while a host of totally inappropriate visions swirled around in his brain. It was not an easy task, he was finding out. "I'll...uh...just eat the chocolate," he said with a slight smile. Alexis looked puzzled because her dad usually _never_ refused whipped cream, but then she just shrugged and picked up something else to dunk into the chocolate.

But then Kate took another strawberry, dunked it in the chocolate, and asked Alexis for the whipped cream. "It's great to eat it with a dollop of whipped cream on it, isn't it?" Alexis nodded as she popped another piece in her mouth.

Kate sneaked a look at him after that last comment, and knowing that she was thinking the exact same thing he was, and was trying to conjure up more memories for him, he just glared at her and shoved the chocolate-covered pound cake into his mouth. But she...she was about to take a bite of that strawberry. That plump strawberry. With the chocolate. And the whipped cream. Wrapping her lips around it...

Were his pants getting tighter?

He forced himself to look away, and he saw the remote control for the TV on the table. "Hey," he told the ladies, "let's see what's on TV tonight." He turned it on before even waiting for a response, hoping for some distraction. But once again, just like during Wheel of Fortune night in Florida, the TV programming gods were not on his side. Because when the TV came on, the opening credits of a popular game show blared through the surround-sound speakers.

Jeopardy.

His eyes whipped back to Kate's face, and for a split second, she looked as surprised as he did. Why, of all of the TV shows in the universe, did the one show that reminded them both of a very steamy interlude in a hot tub have to be airing right now? He quickly grabbed one of the pieces of fruit and held it under the fountain without even bothering to put it on the fork, and then shoved it into his mouth, just to have something else to think about. But then, evil woman that she was, Kate smiled innocently as she said, "Oh, Jeopardy! Good. I really like the double jeopardy round, don't you, Rick?"

Alexis wasn't really paying much attention to their banter, but she definitely paid attention when all of a sudden, right after Kate asked him a question, her father started choking. She missed Kate rolling her eyes as she looked at him and said, "Geez, Dad, are you okay?" He tried to respond but was still coughing energetically.

"Alexis, will you get your father a glass of water? I think maybe the fondue is a little too much for him tonight."

Alexis hopped up and went into the kitchen, and when she was gone, Rick took the opportunity to glare at his fiancee. "You (cough cough)...are pure evil. (cough cough cough) Double (cough) jeopardy...God, Kate! (cough cough)," he managed to get out.

"Hey, buster," she told him, stabbing her finger lightly into his chest, "_your daughter _planned the chocolate fountain even before I got here, and _you_ were the one who turned on the TV. I had nothing to do with either one of those. It isn't my fault that you can't manage to keep your mind G-rated for thirty minutes while we share a nice dessert with your daughter. I am perfectly innocent."

"Innocent (cough) you are not. Do you know (cough) what all of this has (cough) done to me?"

"Not exactly, but I'm sure you'll show me later," she finished softly with a raised eyebrow.

"You can bet on it," he promised as Alexis walked back into the room with a glass of water for her father. He gratefully took it from her and tipped back the glass, drinking until the glass was empty.

Although Kate was finding the whole situation, and the coincidences as well as Rick's reaction to everything, pretty amusing, she figured she'd take some pity on him and change the subject to something a little more mundane. So she turned to Alexis and said brightly, "Alexis, did I ever tell you about the ice cream place your dad took me to? He went to get the ice cream and he came back with a _platter_..."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Once they'd cleaned up the chocolate fountain (during which Rick had complained that the extensive cleanup almost destroyed the fun of using it) and Alexis had gone to bed, they'd retired to his room. He ambled to his room behind her, closed the door gently...and then he attacked. Later, that was the only way that Kate could think of describing what happened. And she'd never been attacked quite so thoroughly, pleasantly or perfectly before. Of course, as soon as he attacked her, she attacked him right back.

When he first grabbed her, kissed her, and pushed her onto the bed, she was mildly shocked. She knew with the way the evening started that it would be a memorable night, but she had no idea quite how memorable it would be, or quite how quickly it would commence once they got into the bedroom.

When she came up for air, she asked him, "Not wasting any time, huh?"

"Kate," he growled at her, "Thanks to that little display of yours earlier, I think I've had a hard-on for about the last three hours or so. Do you know how difficult it was to make sure my daughter didn't get a glimpse of that?"

"Sounds like a problem," she sympathized. "So I suppose you still might need some help with that problem?"

And help with his problem she did. And when his 'problem' grew into another problem, she helped with that too. So later, as they lay exhausted in his bed, Kate felt a laugh bubble up in her as she thought back over the beginning part of the evening. Rick looked over at her and asked "What?"

"You. Your face earlier when you saw me standing there in the kitchen. And how you just dropped the groceries. Really smooth, Castle."

"Hey! I didn't expect you! I thought for a few seconds that I wanted you here so badly that my imagination had conjured you up. But...what happened? I never got to talk to Alexis, and you said you wouldn't come until I did, but you're here, and I'm...what happened? What did I miss?"

"Without going into too much detail, Alexis called me this afternoon, and it sounds like she had sort of the same type of epiphany that I had right before I put on the ring. We talked, and here I am."

"For how long?"

"For a few days at least. Then...we'll see."

"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you go through that whole thing on the phone, telling me to talk to her...all of that. That was _mean_, Beckett. You know how much I wanted you to come back tonight. You could have put me out of my misery."

"Alexis suggested we keep it as a surprise. And I figured a little patience wouldn't hurt you."

"Mean, Beckett." A full minute went by before he spoke again. "I might have, oh, stopped at the post office today and picked up a change of address form..." he revealed.

She rolled her eyes. "First things first, Castle. Trial run before forms. And I think they probably have those forms online now anyway."

"They probably do, but there's something much more satisfying about filling out the paper form for something like that. More of an occasion."

"I suppose you'll want to have another party with the chocolate fountain."

"Hey, that's a good idea!" But then his brows furrowed. "But we'd better make it during a night when Alexis and mother are gone for the night. Because I think after this, I'm going to associate the chocolate fountain with what we just did."

"A conditioned response? Like Pavlov's dogs?"

"Exactly."

"So if I mention chocolate fountains, you'll get a hard-on. My, oh my, Castle. This _could_ be interesting...when you get out of line at the precinct, when you're annoying at crime scenes..." she trailed off as if she was thinking of all of the ways she could use this new information.

He looked at her sideways on the pillow they shared. "Have I told you lately how evil you are?"

"Yes, but you love me anyway," she quipped right away, not being able to resist taunting him with another one of the fun ways to rib him that she'd discovered on their trip.

Upon hearing that, he closed his eyes and shook his head. "Ugh! You did it again!"

"Yes. Yes, I did. Now shut up and kiss me, Castle, and then let's get some sleep." She turned toward him and snuggled into his side.

"Gladly, Detective. And by the way, I'm really glad you're here." He kissed her forehead as he settled in and closed his eyes.

"Actually, Rick, I am too. Really." And she did the same as him, closing her eyes. And as she drifted off to sleep, she realized how she didn't feel out of place, and she didn't feel like she was visiting. She felt...home. She thought it would take her longer to settle in and feel comfortable, but the fact was that she already did, and she knew it had a lot to do with the man who was laying next to her. Home was where he was. Of course, she wouldn't tell Rick that she felt so comfortable just yet, but she would eventually. So for now, she just laid in the bed with him, thinking about how content she felt, and fell into a peaceful slumber with him at her side, hopefully the first night of many, many more that they would spend like that.

* * *

_**Sorry about the length of the end of this with the chocolate fountain. When I hit on the comic possibilities of the kid in the room when the chocolate fountain evoked so many erotic memories and thoughts, it kind of got away from me.**_

_**I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I really enjoyed writing the closure and some of the moments in this chapter. I just felt like it all came together nicely, and I hope you feel the same way too. **_

_**Any feedback you can give me is always wonderful and is greatly appreciated. If you've made it this far, I sincerely thank you for reading.**_


	80. Final Author's Note

Long Author's Note (beware!):

I wanted to thank everyone who has been reading this story to this point. It has been quite a journey, and one that I never would have imagined thirteen months ago when I wrote the first chapter on a whim.

I went to Sanibel/Captiva, and as I was driving down the main road on Captiva, my son (the Castle fanatic kid) and I passed these beautiful houses that were right on the beach. Some were humble (for beach houses) and some were huge. I'd been into Castle Fanfiction for several months by that point, and had written a few things myself. So as I was driving past these houses, I kept thinking about how I could just see Castle in one of those houses. It was a fun little daydream.

Then when I returned home, I wrote the first chapter on that first day after I got back. Honestly, at that point, I'd only planned in my head for about three days into the vacation. I never planned for them to get together in my story, partially because I hated the stories where they just realize they're madly in love at the drop of a hat and partially because I didn't think I could write them 'together'. And also, I guess I imagined that nobody would really be interested after a few chapters.

But I was wrong! The response was so wonderful, and the reviews spurred me on to write more and more. (At one point, I wrote so much that I had the nastiest kink in my upper back that wouldn't go away for several days-I think it was because I spent every spare moment with my shoulders hunched, furiously typing out new chapters.) Without those wonderful people who took the time to review and send me messages of encouragement, I'm quite sure I would not have continued writing this story. So please know that if you have ever left me a review for this story along the way, or if you have ever sent me a PM about this story, it has helped me and it is because of you that this story became what it did.

I don't want to bore you all too much about this, but from an author's point of view, feedback from those who read and follow a story is so incredibly important; it's essential. I know there are people out there who say 'I never review anything', almost proudly. When I read a comment like that, I have to wonder...why not? If you like something, why not say that you like it? What is the harm in that? Speaking for myself, those reviews or private messages are pretty much the only way I have of knowing if what I spend hours creating matters to someone else. It's not about the review count at all, although I'm sure some of the more cynical people will say that. I've also heard the comments about 'begging for reviews'. I honestly don't understand why some readers feel that authors wanting feedback is...offensive or something. The derision that I've heard from some people regarding this is amazing. One of the episodes of Castle-the show that we all love-even dealt with reviews, and I don't think anyone thought less of the character for wanting good feedback about his work or being anxious of what people thought about it.

Some people say 'write for yourself'. I can do that, but at the end of the day, I want to share it. I want to know if it's any good. I want to know what I can improve. I'm human, and I can't exist in a vacuum. And I know that I'm not always my best critic, so that feedback from others in invaluable; some of the chapters that have been the best-received by my readers are the ones that I wasn't overly pleased with initially. So it shows what I know (LOL) and it further illustrates the importance of reader comments. So truly, they are appreciated so much.

_Now, the reason for this long explanation and this author's note: after a lot of deliberation and despite the fact that I do have more ideas for at least a few more epilogues of this story, I've decided to scrap those ideas and end it with the last chapter; Epilogue 2 is the end of the 'The Plan'._

I have gotten some wonderful comments about the last couple of chapters and for those people who took the time to comment, I thank you so much for those. Some new people have just found the story and have bravely tackled it, and they've sent me some wonderful messages. But overall, I believe that readership has dropped off. I get the impression that, with the exception of a handful of wonderful fans, people are just sick of the story and want it to be done. Based on relative traffic lately, it seems that very few of the over 700+ subscribers are actually invested in reading a new chapter anymore. Traffic to the story has been way down, so I'm reading the writing on the wall; I'm taking the hint. Like I've read about some TV shows or sports stars: they'd rather retire gracefully than to be canceled or cut. So I'm not going to push this story any farther; I'd rather people not remember this story at the one the author couldn't stand to end after the obvious conclusion and it went down the toilet. So I'm going to concentrate my efforts in other directions.

Once again, if you're reading this, I sincerely thank you for making it this far. I didn't just want to mark this story as complete without giving you an explanation. If you're one of those who has ever commented on my work, I thank you and have very much appreciated your feedback; I can't put into words how much. Some readers have sent me some truly heartwarming messages about how the story helped them escape from their problems for a bit, or just took them to a happy AU for a little while, and I'm truly touched that my little story could do that for you. It's amazing, and I'm humbled that my story could help people like that, more than just for entertainment value. If, by chance, you're one of those who say they never review but still want to follow stories, I implore you to reconsider. If the story is good enough to follow, then please tell that author why, at least once during the story. It costs you nothing except a few minutes, and it can make a great difference to that author, maybe the difference between continuing to write that story or not.

So I bid you farewell, and I truly hope that you have enjoyed the story and might someday find the time to read some of my other stories.

Again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading.

-Googie

(PS...don't review this chapter. There's no point. It's just a long note, and an explanation. Now go and read some other wonderful fanficton from the other talented writers out there. Right now...go do it!) ;-)


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